A GROUP of final year students from Darwen Vale High School will be shadowing Capita employees over the next seven months as part of a new mentoring scheme.

The scheme follows a successful pilot project last year in which six Darwen Vale business studies students visited Capita and received guidance from mentors.

All those taking part improved on their predicted exam grades, with several students achieving their best grade in business studies.

Capita administers a contract for TV Licensing from its India Mill site in Darwen and provides services for Blackburn with Darwen Council from sites around the area.

It has agreed to mentor six Year 11 students who are in their final year of study for GCSE business studies.

They will make weekly visits to Capita, where twelve mentors -- all customer service advisers working on TV Licensing -- will explain their roles, answer questions about their work and help students to use the internet to find information for their studies.

The mentors will help the students link business studies theory to what they see happening in real life.

Simon Pill, Capita's training and recruitment manager at the India Mill contact centre, said: "We gain as much for working with these young people as they get from working with us."