Enquiring Minds Online

Available across Australia

COVID has meant that school children across Australia have had their educations critically disrupted. Online learning cannot possibly match the experience of in-person instruction and many without access to extra support networks will be unable to compensate. We at The Institute for Enquiring Minds believe there has never been a greater need for the kind of support we can provide young under-resourced learners. We have therefore flipped our model of delivery and currently deliver all our maths mentoring online.

Conscious of the unique child-safety challenges posed by an online model The Institute for Enquiring Minds has adopted a best-in-class protocol for online maths mentoring. The Institute for Enquiring Minds is committed to the security and safety of all our scholars and mentors. Our suite of policies and procedures have been developed by our Board with reference to Victorian and National standards and in collaboration with our key charitable partners pro-bono legal representative.

The following is a summary of these protocols. Full policies and standard operating procedures are available upon request:

  • Potential Mentors must apply online, obtain a Working With Children Check, provide the names of two referees and pass an interview. If successful each mentor must familiarise themselves with, and agree to, the policies of The Institute. In particular they must read the child safety policy and code of conduct, signing both to confirm their understanding.

  • Meeting are only conducted via approved platforms which facilitate recording.

  • As well as the Mentees, other stakeholders are invited to each online tutoring session. These other stakeholders include at least one Institute Board member and one third party stakeholder (e.g. a representative of a referring organisation).

  • All Mentees should interact with their Mentor and co-Mentees from a shared space.

  • All Mentees must consent to the recording of the entire tutorial by the Mentor. All Mentees must be reminded at the start of each session that the session is being recorded. All sessions are recorded and saved to a central Institute storage site.