Mentoring Program Improves Labor-Market Prospects of Highly Disadvantaged Adolescents in Germany

The labor-market prospects of German adolescents from highly disadvantaged backgrounds improve substantially when these students are given mentoring. This is the conclusion of a new ifo study, which was presented in Munich on Wednesday. “For these adolescents, the projected income effects exceed the costs of the mentoring program many times over,” says Ludger Wößmann, Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education.

The study found that one year after the start of the program, mentoring had improved the math grades of eighth- and ninth-grade high-school students (roughly 14 and 15 years old respectively) from highly disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as improving their patience, social skills, and labor-market orientation. “Highly disadvantaged adolescents often get little help from their parents. The program narrows the gap in their labor-market prospects compared to adolescents from better-off backgrounds,” Wößmann says. An important aspect of this, he notes, is that the young people saw their mentors as people they could talk to about their future. “The effects were equally positive for girls and boys,” adds Sven Resnjanskij, co-author of the ifo study. “In contrast, adolescents from less disadvantaged family backgrounds experienced no positive effects from the program.”

Moreover, Wößmann observed, adolescents are not personally responsible for their family circumstances, which are outside of their control, while differences in the degree of family support are a major factor for social inequality. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Germany, it can take six generations for the descendants of a low-income family to reach the average income.

In a multi-year project, the ifo Institute investigated the effectiveness of a large German mentoring program called “ROCK YOUR LIFE!” A total of 308 adolescents in 19 schools took part in the study. They were divided into a participant group and a reference group, so that the differences could be analyzed. Among participants, the proportion of adolescents from an immigration background was 58 percent, which is more than twice the German average (28 percent). One in every four adolescents in the sample lived in a single-parent household, compared to the German average of 14 percent.

“ROCK YOUR LIFE!” was founded by a group of university students in 2008 and is now offered in 42 cities throughout Germany. Since its creation, it has supported more than 7,000 high-school students for up to two years. The program is aimed at adolescents in the German high schools known as “Hauptschulen” and similar school types with a vocational element. It focuses on schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods and pairs the teenagers with student mentors. Its goal is to help students make a successful transition from the foundational high school level to vocational training or the higher-level school grades. “The results of the study show that our mentoring, late as it comes during the school years of the socially disadvantaged adolescents, can nevertheless narrow the gap that opened up on account of their background through no fault of their own,” says Elisabeth Hahnke, CEO of “ROCK YOUR LIFE!” “That motivates us to expand our efforts even further.”

The project received financial support from the Wübben Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation, Porticus, and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Integration. Markus Warnke, CEO of the Wübben Foundation, says: “Not only are the results of the study a credit to the many mentors who volunteered their time, but they also place the onus squarely on politicymakers to get behind such projects.”

Minister of State for Integration Annette Widmann-Mauz says: “The results are an incentive for everyone responsible for the education of children. Mentoring works; it builds a pathway for adolescents from less educationally oriented families – whether with or without an immigration background – to access further education and therefore improve their prospects on the labor market. We need many more programs like this.”

Co-CEO of the Jacobs Foundation, Simon Sommer says: “The project can serve as an example to others. In Germany, the rigorous evaluation of educational programs is still much too rare. We need lots more reliable data to be able to demonstrate which measures actually work.” Wößmann and Resnjanskij carried out the study in collaboration with Jens Ruhose from Kiel University and Simon Wiederhold from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.