Baseline data from this year’s Habs Aspire mentees shows exactly where the gaps are – and exactly what a mentor can do to close them.
Every student who joins Habs Aspire completes a baseline survey as part of their onboarding. It’s not a formality. The questions map directly onto our theory of change, and the answers this year tell a consistent story: our sixth formers are ambitious, but many don’t yet have the network, the knowledge, or the confidence to turn that ambition into a plan.
85% of this year’s mentees agreed that “people like me can be successful.” They believe in themselves. However, 33% don’t have a plan for their next steps. 40% don’t know where to access trustworthy information. 71% don’t know what they need to do to be successful in job or university applications. The aspiration is there but the roadmap isn’t – yet.
The same pattern shows up around access to people, not just information. 53% of mentees don’t have someone to talk to about their options when they leave school, and 74% have no contact with someone with similar skills who they consider successful. For a lot of young people, that’s the real barrier: not a lack of ambition, but a lack of access to someone who’s already done it. As one student put it in this year’s survey:
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It’s a similar story on resilience. 90% of mentees say they don’t avoid doing things just because they look difficult, and 85% believe they can solve difficult problems – real strengths to build on. But 75% don’t know what their options are if their next steps don’t go according to plan, and half don’t know how to handle unforeseen situations. Our students are willing to try. They just haven’t yet had the guidance to navigate it when things don’t go as expected – which, in any career, they eventually won’t.
This is exactly the gap a mentor closes
None of this is a surprise to anyone who has mentored on Habs Aspire before – it’s precisely why the programme exists. A mentor doesn’t need to have all the answers. What our students consistently say they’re looking for is simpler than that: someone to talk to, a bit of real-world insight into how a sector or a job actually works, and the reassurance that comes from being taken seriously by an adult outside school. As one mentee told us:
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That’s not a big ask for a mentor to deliver – a handful of conversations, some honest advice, a willingness to share what your own path actually looked like (including the parts that didn’t go to plan). But for a student who currently has no one else to ask, it can be the difference between drifting through Sixth Form and leaving it with a plan, a network, and genuine confidence.
Sign up as a mentor
We’re looking for professionals from every sector and every stage of career to join the Habs Aspire mentoring programme. You don’t need a background in education, and you don’t need to have all the answers – you just need to be willing to share your time and your experience with a student who’s currently short of both.
If you’ve ever had someone give you the right piece of advice at the right moment, you already know how much it can matter.
Sign up today and be that person for a Haberdasher sixth former.
