Mentoring is not supervision and it is not performance management. It is a supportive relationship where an educator can think out loud, try something, and be met with a question rather than a correction. Much of educational leadership is this quiet coaching, done alongside educators, not above them.
A mentoring conversation only works if it is safe. What is said in it is private. What can travel out of it is a change the educator chooses to try in a room. Ask ECE holds this line firmly: a mentoring conversation is never turned into a record for a visit, and it is never evidence in itself.
The regulations do not prescribe how mentoring is done, but Element 7.2.3 (development of professionals) expects educators' knowledge and skills to be kept current through regular review and individual learning and development plans. Mentoring is one of the ways a service builds that capability.
Ask more than you tell. Meet the educator where they are, not where you wish they were. Agree one small change to try, not ten. Then come back to it, so the conversation leads somewhere. The measure of good mentoring is not the meeting; it is what changes in the room afterwards.
An educator is anxious about a family who complains often. Rather than stepping in, the leader helps her rehearse one honest sentence to open the next conversation. It stays between them. A fortnight later the educator reports the exchange went better than she feared. The trial worked; the confidence is hers.
No. Mentoring is a supportive, confidential coaching relationship. Performance review is a separate, formal process, which Element 7.2.3 relates to.
No. The conversation is private. Its outcome, an agreed change to practice tried in a room, can be evidence; the conversation itself is not.
By coaching rather than correcting: noticing where an educator is finding something hard, asking questions, agreeing small changes to try, and following up.
Written by the Ask ECE editorial team and checked against ACECQA guidance and the Education and Care Services National Regulations. Last reviewed September 2026. Ask ECE links to the source and does not reproduce it.