TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Mentor and Headteacher roles provide access to student follow-up tools that are not available in the standard teacher view. Both roles are assigned by a system administrator and appear as a dedicated entry in the user's personal menu once configured.
1 Overview
The Mentor and Headteacher roles are part of a three-level follow-up structure in itslearning:
| Level | Role | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Course | Teacher | Responsible for assessments and content within individual courses. |
| Group | Mentor | Follows up an assigned group of learners across all their courses. Can create and manage ILPs, track behaviour, and view assessment data. |
| Organisation | Headteacher | Oversees all learners within an assigned school or organisational unit. Can review and approve assessments, manage terms, and send reminders to teachers. |
Note: A user can hold both the Mentor and Headteacher roles simultaneously. When both are active, a combined Supervisor entry replaces the separate menu entries, providing access to all tools from both roles in one place.
Prerequisite: Both roles must be configured and assigned by a system administrator before access is available. See Mentor and Headteacher – Configuration (Sysadmin).
Note: Role names may differ in your organisation. A system administrator can configure custom labels for both roles. If you are unsure which role you have been assigned, contact your administrator.
2 Mentor
When the Mentor role is active, a Mentor entry appears in the personal menu. This provides access to the following sections.
2.1 Manage your group
The Manage your group section provides tools for monitoring and supporting assigned learners.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Individual learning plans | Create and manage individual learning plans for assigned learners. |
| Behaviour | Manage behaviour tracking for assigned learners. |
| Assessments | Manage course assessments for assigned learners. |
| Parents | Contact information for assigned learners' parents. |
| Letters | Track which letters have been opened by parents and students. Letters are formal written communications sent to students and/or parents, created from within the Attendance, Behaviour, or Assessment reports. Mentors and headteachers can view draft assessment letters for their assigned learners and publish them when ready. |
Note: Individual learning plans are only available if a system administrator has created at least one ILP template.
Prerequisite: Letters require templates to be created by a system administrator before they can be used. Letter types (Attendance, Behaviour, Assessment) determine where letters can be created and where they appear for the recipient. Teachers can only create attendance letters from within a course; mentors and headteachers can create letters across all three categories.
2.2 Reports
The 360° reports provide a cross-course view of each assigned learner's engagement and performance. Reports are available in two views: Your students (student-centric) and Courses (course-centric). Each student view contains three report tabs:
| Report | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Activity | How the student is engaging with course content: time spent in courses, communication and discussion activity, and activity timelines and trends over time. |
| Progress | Completion of assignments, tests, and other work across courses, including time spent online. Progress against mandatory and optional work can be compared against class averages. |
| Grades | Student achievements and grade trends compared against course averages. |
Prerequisite: 360° reports must be enabled at organisation level by a system administrator. Reports reflect actual course activity; if students have not been active in courses, the reports will contain no data.
Note: For assessment data to appear in the Assessments view, courses must be linked to a term by the course teacher or content author. If courses are not term-linked, the 360° reports may be the only available tracking view.
Note: The 360° reports are designed for use with smaller groups of students. Assigning an entire school's student population to a single mentor is not recommended, as the reports are not intended to display data for large numbers of students simultaneously. For school-wide oversight, use the Headteacher role instead.
3 Headteacher
When the Headteacher role is active, a Headteacher entry appears in the personal menu. This provides the same group-level access as the Mentor role, plus an additional Manage your organisation section.
3.1 Manage your group
Identical to the Mentor role. See Section 2.1 for details.
3.2 Manage your organisation
The Manage your organisation section provides access to data and management tools for all learners within the assigned school or organisational unit. This section is not available in the Mentor role.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Behaviour | Manage behaviour tracking across the assigned organisation. |
| Assessments | Review and approve course assessments across the organisation. The headteacher can send reminder messages to teachers who have not completed their assessments, mark a term as complete at organisation level (after which teachers can no longer edit assessments), or return a course to the teacher for further assessment. |
| Letters | Track which letters have been opened by parents and students across the assigned organisation. |
Note: The assessment approval workflow follows a three-stage process: the teacher marks assessments complete at course level, the headteacher reviews and approves at organisation level, and the headteacher marks the term as complete. The exact behaviour at each stage depends on the workflow settings configured by your system administrator (Administration > Workflow).
3.3 Reports
Identical to the Mentor role, with scope extended to all learners within the assigned organisation. See Section 2.2 for details.
4 Role comparison
The table below summarises the features available to each role. Teacher access is included for reference; note that teacher-level access to behaviour and assessments is scoped to individual courses, whereas mentor and headteacher access covers assigned learners across all their courses.
| Feature | Teacher | Mentor | Headteacher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual learning plans – view and contribute | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Individual learning plans – create and manage | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Behaviour tracking – group / assigned learners | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Behaviour tracking – organisation | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Assessments – group / assigned learners | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assessments – organisation | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Parent contact information | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Create letters (Attendance only) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Create letters (Behaviour and Assessment) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Track letter open status – group / assigned learners | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Track letter open status – organisation | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| 360° reports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Note: Teacher-level 360° report access is scoped to individual courses. Mentor and headteacher 360° report access covers assigned learners across all their courses.