Flying Start, an inter-institutional NTFS project, developed and evaluated programmes in which university students mentored A-level and other pre-university students in academic writing. Feedback showed that the pre-university mentees found the mentors easy to talk to and believed the programme would help them write better at university. Focus groups revealed that mentees would have liked better preparation for the programmes; that interpersonal mentor-mentee interactions affected both sets of students’ experiences; and that mentees valued working with mentors on the aspects of writing that were programme targets. Before-and-after measures showed limited changes in approaches to learning, no changes in understanding of the core criteria for university writing, but small improvements in quality of writing. The evaluation provides the basis for recommendations about wider use of pre-university interventions in academic writing, and about ways the approach could be adapted for different settings.This project was part of the Flying Start programme, funded by a National Teaching Fellowship Project grant awarded to Lin Norton and James Elander
