Mentoring has become established as a central feature of initial teacher training programmes in English further education (FE) yet there remains a lack of clarity within the sector about what mentoring should mean. The direction of government reforms has been to make mentoring part of the formal assessment of trainee teachers against national standards, and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspection reports emphasise an approach to mentoring that is target‐driven and judgemental. Official rhetoric uses the language of ‘excellence’ or ‘best practice’. However, mentoring literature reveals a range of possible models, and research into mentoring practices within colleges suggests there is a diversity of ideas and approaches, many of which emphasise the developmental character of good mentoring. In this paper we analyse some of the tensions and uncertainty that surround mentoring and reflect on their significance for teachers and managers in the development of initial teacher training in the sector.