This article explores the role of an Academic Advising programme based on personal exchanges between academic staff member and students in enhancing the latter's academic success. The contribution focuses specifically on the relevance of "Academic Advising" as an innovative strategy for boosting the academic performance of extended diploma programme students. This strategy responds to the imperative to design appropriate interventions to effectively assist with increasing the academic success of students from disadvantaged school backgrounds, who are considered "at-risk" especially in their first year. Put differently, Academic Advising is an intervention aimed at identifying these "at-risk" students early in their first year of study, and supporting them holistically with the view to increasing "access for success" in Higher Education. Interviews with staff members and students are used to elicit both parties' experience of the particular intervention. It is shown that the success of this intervention is strongly linked to academic staff's ability to identify the personal struggles of individual students, namely, accommodation issues, reading and language challenges, and lack of career guidance. Besides improving students' academic performance, this intervention will create a sense of accomplishment, increased enthusiasm and confidence among these students, who did not initially meet the minimum entry requirements for Higher Education.

Only a small percentage of mathematics teacher professional development activities in South Africa include pedagogy and instruction approaches required to teach the content. In the light of the poor mathematics results, it is of pertinent importance that teachers need to be developed in terms of the mathematics they teach and the pedagogical component of it. A teachers’ professional development programme that used mentoring as one of the interventions was investigated where the mentor conducted classroom observations and had post–observation conferences with the teachers. The data from the observations, post observation conferences and interviews of both the mentors and the mathematics teachers was used to inform the off-site workshops on mathematics content and the instructional skills required to effectively teach the content. Mentoring supported the teachers in terms of mathematics content and instruction, team teaching and lesson preparation. The teachers’ individual content and instructional needs were also assessed and supported. The study revealed that mentoring that takes cognisance of teachers’ content and instructional needs enhanced their lesson preparation and understanding of mathematics as well as the skills required to teach it effectively. The study recommends mentoring as an effective intervention in professional development programmes especially when it is informed by the teachers’ instructional and content needs.

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