The impact of teacher mentoring on student achievement in disadvantaged schools

The impact of teacher mentoring on student achievement has been researched extensively, but there are still gaps and disparities in the literature with regards to the size of the impact on student achievement, the generalizability of existing research, the length of mentoring needed as well as the time that it takes to achieve meaningful increases in student achievement in disadvantaged poor-performing schools. The purpose of this research was to address these gaps in the research literature by doing a concurrent, matched but non-randomised control study to determine the impact of mentoring of teachers on student achievement in the school-university partnership between the UFS and disadvantaged poor-performing schools in its feeding area over a period of four years. The impact of mentoring teachers on the student achievement in accounting, mathematics and physical sciences were researched. Large positive impacts were achieved in all the subjects. There was no significant time delay in the impact that mentoring had on student achievement. The impacts were achieved from the first year after mentoring started and were still present four years after mentoring started. The practical significance of these findings is that student achievement in poor-performing disadvantaged schools can be meaningfully improved by mentoring teachers in these schools.