The Aimhigher Sheffield 'Pass it on' Parent Mentor 'project stemmed from an idea that was raised at an Aimhigher conference in September 2007 as part of an investigative exercise. The exercise was an attempt to find new or innovative ways to engage with parents with no experience or history of Higher Education in their families in targeted areas with low levels of participation in HE across South Yorkshire.

Aims of the planned project were to raise aspirations and motivation towards Higher Education for parents/carers in the identified areas and to help them to help their children and/or themselves to make informed choices about accessing Higher Education. Aimhigher explicitly recognises that if parents/carers have experience of HE they are more likely to influence their children to aspire to HE.

The Parent mentor pilot project was established and set up by Margaret Mitchell based at the University of Sheffield (UoS) as a Widening Participation projects officer and partner Maggie Bamford from Sheffield Futures.

We aimed to 'look both ways' at parents not only as influencers but also as learners in their own right to participate in learning as first generation people into HE.

To be able to reach 'hard to reach' parents the project identified and recruited ten parent mentors who were also graduates and also a couple of undergraduates from UoS and one post grad student from Sheffield Hallam University.

We recruited people who had succeeded at HE themselves or were in the process of study at University or who had successfully guided their children to University and would be willing to work with parents from the Aimhigher target groups; to train as mentors to engage with other parents at community level at a range of events to support and encourage parents/carers and young people to navigate their way through the HE system.

The parent mentors have attended events at Colleges, community events, homework clubs around the city to work with parents and carers. In particular they have planned and delivered a number of sessions with a group of Somali parents at a Homework club at the Broomhall Centre in Sheffield and taken part in events for carers of 'Looked after children' and attended Parent's evenings at Castle College amongst a wide range of activities.

The mentors were all very well received in the communities they worked in and they were extremely enthusiastic and passionate about sharing the benefit of their experience and helping other parents/children to access HE.

Download a Parent Poster (PDF):
Julia Allen
Eunice Onwuamaegbu