Re-Centring the School Context in Policy Enactments: An Empirical Investigation into Mentorship Programmes for Early Career Teachers

This article examines mentorship provisions for Early Career Teachers (ECTs) – a component of the 2019 Early Career Framework (ECF) introduced by the UK’s Department for Education. Drawing on Braun et al. (2011), it analyses data produced through interviews and focus groups with ECT programme coordinators, mentors, and ECTs from four schools operating under different governance models – Faith-based, Independent, Local Authority, and Multi-Academy Trust – in the South of England. It shows that while all schools seem to adopt similar material approaches to implementing this new policy, significant differences in their enactment strategies stem from each school’s uniquely constellated contextual dimensions. The discussion of findings highlights that the multi-layered context of a school, construed here vis-à-vis its governance model, influences its policy enactment practices. This article argues that the school’s governance model impacts professional and situated contexts and mediates external forces that affect each school’s ECT programme, thus dictating how an ECT programme is embedded within the contextual dimensions of a school. It emphasises the importance of moving away from a top-down approach to policy implementation and re-centres schools and their unique contexts in policy enactment processes. The article concludes with specific recommendations for improving mentorship programmes.