Mentoring: Super role models

That's a heavy-duty responsibility, but this is the way people tend to talk about mentoring. It's an activity that over the past decade has spread across many settings in work with young people. Enthusiasts see it as a means to raise achievement and self-confidence, to guide career development and support young people who are vulnerable or at risk of exclusion.

Critics, however, see it as an exercise in social engineering - one that in particular seeks to make young people compliant to the needs of employers.

But what exactly is it? A literature review carried out last year by John Hall, of the University of Glasgow, said it was "an ill-defined concept that is deeply contested". The National Mentoring Network, which supports the development of mentoring in the UK, also points out that there is no one universally accepted definition, but suggests all mentoring relationships feature "support given voluntarily by one person to another".