Previous research shows that truancy in upper secondary school positively correlates to the student’s future level of involvement in society. As such, in order to support an individual’s positive development, it is essential to work with early interventions to increase school attendance. One such preventive initiative is to employ full-time mentors who specifically hold the responsibility to monitor and follow-up student’s absence. This study focuses on full-time mentors working in upper-secondary school, and aims to examine a student’s perspective on the work of the full-time mentors. Collection of material has been done through the execution of eight semi-structured interviews with eight students in an upper secondary school in Stockholm, Sweden. The student’s statements have been interpreted and analyzed from the theoretical standpoint of social constructivism. As such, in this study, the work of the mentor as well as the student’s perception of the mentor’s role, is perceived as part of a social process and consequently dependent on its context. This means that components such as the distribution of power between student and mentor have been relevant to consider, in relation to interventions meant to increase student attendance. The study highlights the importance of using communicative tools, and mutual conversations, as well as building and maintaining well-functioning relationships between students and mentors. The result shows that the way that full-time mentors communicate with students, could be made more explicit, so that routines and expectations leading from that communication is clear to the student. In addition, the study’s result also indicate that full-time mentors could better adapt their way of communicating, in order to avoid an unbalanced power distribution between the full-time mentor and the student. The conclusion of the study is that communicative tools, such as relationship-creating and mutual conversations, when thoughtfully applied, can increase participation in school and as such, reduce absence.

I takt med lärarbristen har det samtidigt väckts ett intresse för nya typer av läraravlastande yrkeskategorier i svenska grundskolan. Det finns en bred variation på benämningar och uppgifter för denna yrkesgrupp och Heltidsmentorer är en av de tjänster som ingår i denna nya yrkeskategori. En fråga som rimligtvis kan vara svår att ignorera är vad dessa nya tjänster kan innebära för lärare och elever. Syftet med föreliggande uppsats är därför att studera om det har någon effekt och i så fall vilken effekt det har att anställa heltidsmentorer för studieresultatet för elever i årskurs 9 i den svenska kommunala grundskolan. Vidare är också syftet att undersöka om socioekonomisk bakgrund kan ha ett samband med vilken typ av tjänst skolor väljer att anställa. Studien är baserad på variansanalys av registerdata om 99 skolors resultatstatistik. Några av studiens mest intressanta fynd är att det rent generellt inte verkar spela någon roll för studieresultatet vilken typ av avlastande tjänst en skola väljer att anställa. Dessutom verkar det som att ju högre socioekonomisk bakgrund eleverna har på en skola, desto större chans är det att skolan väljer bort läraravlastande tjänster. / At the same time as, and in line with the shortage of teachers, an interest has been aroused in new types of teacher-relieving professional categories in Swedish compulsory schools. There is a wide variety of professional categories and tasks for this role and Full-time mentors are one of the positions included in this new professional category. One question that can reasonably be difficult to ignore is what these new services might mean for teachers and students? The purpose of this thesis is therefore to study whether it has any effect and, if so, what effect it has to hire full-time mentors for the study results for students in year 9 in the Swedish municipal compulsory school. Furthermore, the aim is also to investigate whether socio-economic background may have a connection with the type of position schools choose to employ. The study is based on analysis of variance of register data from 99 Swedish schools. Some of the study's most interesting findings are that, in general, it does not seem to matter what type of relief service a school chooses to hire for students' academic performance. In addition, it seems that the higher the socioeconomic background of students at a school, the greater the chance that the school will opt out of teacher relieving positions.