What is GAP?

GAP is an amazing one to one mentoring opportunity which matches university students, from under-represented backgrounds, with a mentor from the Civil Service who has an expertise in a particular professional area. The programme aims to build confidence, aspiration and support future career choices, as well as enhancing communication skills and building new networks.

GAP aims to provide students from less privileged backgrounds with access to a Civil Service professional who can provide a real-life knowledge and experience of a profession and help build soft skills like communication and networking.

Mentees are encouraged to talk about their career aspirations and any opportunities or barriers they feel may prevent them from achieving their goals. The role of the mentor is to offer guidance and advice, as well as helping to identify solutions to support mentees to achieve their potential.

Commitment

GAP should only be considered by students who are able to commit fully to the programme. Mentors are giving up their own time and commitment to provide this support and it is essential that students do likewise.

To take part in the programme students must commit to:

• Investing their time to engage with the mentor; typically, one hour a month for 6 months via digital platforms.
• Actively participating in the scheme, imparting/receiving advice and considering opportunities to develop.
• Completing feedback / evaluation forms to allow us to make improvements that will benefit others in future.
• Notifying the programme organisers of any changes, e.g. contact details, programme participation.
• Mentees must complete a minimum of 5 out of the 6 sessions to receive their Certificate of Participation at the end of the programme.

Sessions will take place a minimum of once a month via MS Teams/phone call for a period of 6 months. A guidebook will be provided to assist with conversation starters and session pointers.

Criteria

Students must come from lower socio-economic backgrounds (LSEB), an example may be that they received/were eligible for free school meals at any stage in their schooling, they receive a higher bursary, or their parents were unemployed or in routine/manual labour job roles. There will be questions in the application form that will determine this and students who don’t meet the criteria will be notified. Students who are eligible will be notified when they receive their match.

This programme is open to 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th year students, there is no limitations on the degree they are studying.

If you are unsure or have any questions, please contact the team on socialmobility@justice.gov.uk

When does mentoring take place?

Cohort 2 will last 6 months, and run from November 2023 to April 2024, to ensure we avoid the main exam period during May.

Mentee applications will open 25^th September and close midnight 27^th October 2023. The Social Mobility Team will match mentees and mentors based on a list of professional areas of work. Students will be matched where possible to their highest choice, followed by 2^nd choice and then 3^rd. Students and mentors will be notified of their match in November 2023 and be expected to reach out to their mentor as soon as possible to book in a session for November.

Mentoring slots will be allocated to each university equally, and these will be matched with students on a first come first served basis, until all slots are full. If universities don’t fill their allocated slots these will then be shared with other universities.

Role of the University Lead

As the University Lead, we will require support from yourself to advertise the programme and ensure students applying understand the eligibility criteria (this will also be checked at application stage, but we don’t want to disappoint students who haven’t been informed correctly).

University leads will also be our first point of call if we haven’t had any communication from a student, these leads will be responsible for getting in touch with the student to find out if they want to continue the programme. We have a duty of care to make sure everything is okay and to address any issues the student may be having with the programme. We expect all students to be committed to the programme and fully engaged with the sessions organised for them, if students aren’t we will remove them from the programme. Students should let us know if they haven’t had contact from their mentor, we will try to resolve this or allocate a new mentor.

Our mentors will come from the range of professions listed below.

• Analysis, Data, Social Research & Economics - Providing high quality data and analytical services to help ensure strategic, policy, finance, corporate and operational decisions are based on robust evidence.
• Business Management/Administration – sometimes called ‘generalist’ roles, these are the backbone of most Civil Service departments and can cover a whole host of roles across many professions.
• Climate - covering climate change, food safety, transport emissions and sustainable housing as well as a host of other related work.
• Commercial - Tackling some of the most large-scale and complex commercial challenges out there. From simplifying procurement to negotiating with suppliers to improve delivery or resolve disputes, we ensure value for money for the taxpayer.
• Communication - Experts across campaigns, marketing, PR, digital, insight and evaluation and external affairs. Coordinating and guiding the implementation of communications for priority areas and are responsible for the annual communications plan.
• Digital - Cross-government specialists from the Digital, Data and Technology Profession build and manage services that positively affect the lives of millions of people.
• Finance - Drive forward a range of activities within Commercial Finance, Income and Office of Accountant General. The aim is delivering insight & opportunities, mitigation of risks & issues, and robust financial challenge & control in different areas.
• Fraud/Counter Fraud & Compliance - A career in Counter Fraud can offer a variety of opportunities. You could work in investigation, intelligence or assessing and managing fraud risks. Counter fraud covers not just fraud threats from inside and outside of organisations, but is also linked to areas like bribery and corruption, money laundering and cyber crime.
• HR (Human Resources) - Supporting all people activity in ministerial departments, non-ministerial departments, Arms Length Bodies, agencies and public bodies based across the UK and beyond.
• International Trade - Promoting British trade across the world and ensuring the UK takes advantage of the huge opportunities open to us.
• Legal - Providing legal advice on the development, design and implementation of government policies and decisions, and represent the government in court. From roads and rivers, to health and human rights, our work touches on most aspects of public life.
• Operational Delivery - The Operational Delivery Profession is the largest of the 28 Civil Service Professions. Supporting staff in tax and benefit offices, job centres, courts and prisons across the UK, and many working in consular offices abroad.
• Policy - Policy professionals work at the heart of the Civil Service to design, develop and propose appropriate courses of action to help meet key government priorities and ministerial objectives.
• Project Delivery -Thousands of projects are carried out each year across government to improve the UK’s infrastructure, transform public services, safeguard national security and boost international trade. Almost all government policy is delivered through projects or programmes of one form or another.
• Property - They have a major input into policies that have a significant impact on the delivery of government priorities: the transformation of the justice system; developing future workplaces; creating innovative and sustainable working environments; investing in our substantial transport; military and infrastructure assets and providing professional property advice to bodies across the public sector.
• Risk/Audit - supporting civil servants who provide independent assurance to public sector organisations on governance, risk management and internal control arrangements.
• Security/Cyber/National security - working to keep the nation and it’s people safe, protecting citizens data, the national infrastructure, and considerable sums of money for public sector finance.
• Science and Engineering - a range of specialist, deep specialist, policy, analytical and operational roles encompassing science and engineering
• Tax- The Tax Academy promotes tax professionalism in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) on behalf of its tax professionals. A tax professional’s job role requires an in-depth understanding, awareness or application of one or multiple areas of tax policy or law.

Support

A guidance pack will be provided for both mentor and mentee which includes advice and tips about what they can talk about in their sessions, these are just examples, sessions can develop in any way the mentee and mentor take them, this will be shared with mentees when they receive their match.

There is no expectation/guarantee of work experience or shadowing however, if possible, this can be discussed between mentor and mentee, the Social Mobility Team should then be made aware of this.

There will be the opportunity to join ‘Awareness Sessions’ which will cover different areas of the Civil Service, for example, Success Profiles, Prison Service, Frontline Working etc. These will be advertised to mentees once confirmed and they can join the live sessions via the links sent out, they will also be recorded so mentees can watch later if they aren’t available.

Evaluation

There will be midway check-ins to make sure mentees and mentors are enjoying their mentoring, and evaluation forms at the end so the Team can improve the programme for the next cohort. Please encourage your students to complete the forms to ensure these improvements can be made.

If you have any questions, please contact the MoJ Social Mobility Team on socialmobility@justice.gov.uk.  

Apply here: GAP Mentee Application Form