When first joining the teaching profession, beginner teachers find themselves having to bridge the disjuncture between theoretical knowledge and practice (Esau & Maarman 2017). Beginner teachers perceive themselves as unprepared and struggle to cope with all these professional tasks, especially since most initial teacher education (ITE) programmes gravitate more towards theoretical knowledge, as opposed to practical classroom experience (Esau & Maarman 2019) Their perceived unpreparedness may contribute to challenges such as workload imbalance, emotional fatigue, physical illness, poor acclimatisation to school culture, and substandard administration (Smit & du Toit 2016). Mentorship programmes are intended to enlist the support of experienced teachers to assist in diminishing anxiety, fostering workload balance, timetabling execution, combating fatigue, school culture acclimation, quality administrative practices and teaching application of the beginner teacher (Botha & Rens 2018) In this regard, Arends & Phurutse (2009) posits that there is a positive correlation between beginner teachers‟ attrition rate and mentorship programmes. The researchers argue that literature on teacher mentorship in South Africa has largely been from the