This is achieved by linking the student with an experienced person from the appropriate field of endeavour. Relating to experts outside the school environment also requires the students to become more responsible for their own learning, with students establishing goals with their mentor, and generally learning by doing. Selection can, particularly in high schools, lean heavily on self-selection with confirmation sought from parents and teaching staff. Mentors act as advisers, consultants, and role models, and sometimes as critics where this facilitates the student's achievement of their own goals and objectives. Although not normally paid, mentors can benefit from being involved in a mentoring relationship in terms of freshness and perspective.
Some schools rely extensively on ex-students.
This means that most of the mentors are well-known to members of the teaching staff. Clearly there are risks involved in linking students with mentors, especially when mentors may not be personally known to members of the teaching staff and the meetings take place other than at school premises. On the other hand it would be a pity if these risks preclude appropriate learning experiences for students. Apart from common sense the essential principles are to ensure that all parties are fully informed and to ask that the parents or guardians make the decision to proceed and thereby take on the risk. From a parental viewpoint this is hardly unusual - parents frequently take risks in regard to activities as part of their children's broader education.