Student mentors are taking part in a scheme to improve GCSE results of underachieving school pupils.

Pupils who are expected to get D or E grades will be picked for the one-to-one attention from students who coach them towards grade C and over.

The 40 students from the University of Bradford will be working with teenagers aged 11 to 18.

Each student will take four pupils under his or her wing, spending an hour a week helping them. The schools taking part are all in the South Bradford Education Action Zone - Tong, Yorkshire Martyrs, and the Bradford Cathedral Community College.

The National Mentoring Pilot Project has been set up to help children who have the potential to do well at school but who, for a variety of reasons, are in danger of not achieving.

"This is a new and exciting initiative for the University," said co-ordinator Caroline Chambers. "It will help identify pupils who will then work with student mentors from the University. The mentors will visit the pupils in their schools and work with them on a regular, one-to-one basis, addressing their individual learning and development needs and helping them to address issues of self-worth, persistence, confidence, aspirations, goal setting and time management."

The aims are to:

raise standards of performance, in SATs and GCSE

convince pupils of the benefits of education, and show them that access to education is possible and affordable

draw and implement individual learning plans for pupils, including personal achievement targets and time-scales

give them study skills in order to improve their application

develop greater self-esteem, motivation, confidence, persistence and application.

"We have got a very enthusiastic bunch of students from lots of different backgrounds," Caroline Chambers said.

Now training is complete, the students are to be matched with their pupils.