Competition “The best mentor of the year” in a professional educational organization as a means of popularization and a way to assess the effectiveness of mentoring

Mentoring is a traditional method of professional development of teachers, which has proven its effectiveness over time and practice. Obviously, the key figure in the mentoring system is the mentor, without whom mentoring as such becomes impossible. In connection with the foregoing, there is no doubt that there is a need for systematic, comprehensive measures aimed at methodological support for the activities of mentors, the formation of unified approaches to assessing the effectiveness of mentoring and its popularization as a professional activity. The period of transition of the Russian Federation to market relations was characterized by a change in professional interests and values. The period of transition of the Russian Federation to market relations was characterized by a change in professional interests and values. During this period and up to 2010-2015, the study of mentoring (as a form of advanced training) and its practical use was interrupted, but not forgotten. Currently, mentoring as an institution that allows, at minimal cost in a relatively short time, to receive a significant increase in knowledge, skills and abilities, the adoption of corporate values by employees, is experiencing a new upsurge in many areas of the Russian economy. However, researchers [1; 2] identify a number of problems in the implementation of mentoring activities: the most significant are the insufficient level and scale of training of mentors, the lack of a system for improving the qualifications of mentors, and in a number of industries, a formal approach to the performance of their functions by mentors. One of the methods to overcome the identified shortcomings, in our opinion, can be competitions of professional skills among mentors. The analysis of such a competition in the educational organization of secondary vocational education in the city of Chelyabinsk allowed, on the one hand, to demonstrate the success of mentoring and its effects for improving the qualifications of mentors of the quality of education in general, on the other hand, to popularize mentoring both within the pedagogical community of the secondary vocational education system of the Chelyabinsk region, and among social partners (employers, parents of students).