Tutoring programme: the new tailor-made follow-up for young people

To improve the “1 jeune, 1 solution” (1 young person, 1 solution), the French president announced in early March a new system for young people: the tutoring programme “1 jeune, 1 mentor” (1 young person, 1 tutor). The aim of this system is for young people to benefit from customised follow-up from an active or retired person to help her/him in her/his training course or job search.

The objective is to grow the number of tutors from the current 25,000 in France to 100,000 in 2021 and 200,000 in 2022. Indeed, tutoring is, according to the French president “a real leverage to fight house custody. The system relies on trust and solidarity between the tutor and tutored, and encourages the transmission of know-how, know-how-to-be and know-how-to-become”. 

Tutoring: the solution to improve confidence

Tutoring is indeed designed to “boost the self-confidence of young people and broaden their horizon”, according to the information website from the government. To achieve this goal, tutoring “creates bridges between generations and paths leading to educational and professional success”. According to the Collectif Mentorat association promoting this cooperation system for a few years in France, “the ability of tutoring to fight social, educational or territorial gaps is now clearly demonstrated”.

Beyond general concepts, the website of the French government also underlines that tutoring relies on four pragmatic objectives:

- support young people on a long term basis;

- participate in the development of their cultural awareness;

- fight isolation in specific areas;

- help young people find their personal and professional way.

Volunteer tutors, active or retired

Since the objective is to give young people the benefit of professional advice from a tutor, said tutor could be a working person or a retiree, according to the government website. The mission of this adult volunteer will consist of “accompanying young people, sometimes from the beginning of secondary school, over the medium to long term, by devoting one to two hours per month to them”.

Many associations are already “at the forefront of this field”, as are major French companies such as Axa, BNP Paribas, Accenture and Total.

To provide the means to achieve its objectives, the State will devote

30 million to this project for the year 2021, in order to support associations and companies in implementing tutoring on a larger scale.

A system operational in April

Collectif Mentorat, which federates associations in this field, is preparing with the French Ministry of Labour the new platform 1 young person 1 mentor mentioned by the French President. The president said that in April, it will be possible to indicate one’s interest online in order to have access to a tutor or to become a tutor oneself. A new module entitled “Je bénéficie d'un mentor” (I benefit from a tutor) will be accessible on the home page of the 1jeune1solution.gouv.fr platform, so that the project's partner associations can quickly put people in touch with each other. It should also be noted that, according to the French Ministry of Labour, the 1 jeune, 1 solution plan, with a budget of 7 billion euros, should make it possible to provide more than 2 million solutions to young people seeking employment or training by 2021.

To know more

- French presidencial website

- French government website 

- Ministry of Labour website 

- Collectif Mentorat website

Photo credit: ©Studio Romantic - stock.adobe.com