Available across Australia
COVID meant that school children across Australia had their educations critically disrupted. In response, The Institute for Enquiring Minds flipped its delivery model to be fully online. This turned out to be extremely successful, allowing us to expand to connect students and mentors from across Australia. All our one-on-one mentoring is now delivered 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 students 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 and pro-bono legal advisors.
Our child-safety protocol
The following is a summary of these protocols. Full policies and standard operating procedures are available upon request:
Mentor vetting
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.
Approved platforms only
Meetings are only conducted via approved platforms which facilitate recording.
Additional stakeholders present
As well as the Students, 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).
Shared spaces
All Students should interact with their Mentor and fellow Students from a shared space.
Sessions are recorded
All Students must consent to the recording of the entire tutorial by the Mentor. All Students 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.