The application form should take no more than 1 hour to complete. We do ask that you explain, in as much detail as you can, your motivation for working as a Scholars Programme tutor and what experience and skills you will bring to the role.
We are looking for applications that demonstrate motivation to support students from underrepresented groups to access university, and clear evidence of the following qualities:
We do not expect PhD tutors to have experience of working with young people already, though this is of course welcomed, as we provide thorough pedagogical training to all successful applicants.
You can find further guidance for completing an application form in our Application Guidance for Tutors.
At Assessment Centre, you will be asked to do three things:
If you are invited to Assessment Centre, we will send you detailed guidance to help you to prepare.
Yes, as long as you have Right to Work in the UK. You will have to bring the relevant documentation, in the form of physical documents, to prove this to your assessment centre.
Do you sponsor visas?
No, we cannot sponsor visas.
A placement with us does count as paid work; you should check the government policy guidance to ensure you understand the limit for your specific situation.
The Brilliant Club pays Brilliant Tutoring Programme Tutors a stipend for each placement completed at the following rates:
| Brilliant Tutoring Programme Tutors – subject to confirmation | |
| Stipend per placement London* | £625 |
| Stipend per placement outside London | £550 |
Brilliant Tutoring Programme tutor stipends to be confirmed upon confirmation of 2021-22 arrangements.
The Brilliant Club pays Scholars Programme Tutors a stipend for each placement completed at the following rates:
| The Scholars Programme Tutors | |
| Stipend per placement – London* | £530 |
| Stipend per placement – non London | £500 |
| Tutor stipend top up for designing a new course handbook – London* | £140 |
| Tutor stipend top up for designing a new course handbook – Non London | £100 |
*London pay based on tutor home postcode, not location of placement.
The total number of hours you work on each placement may vary, and it is up to you to manage your time. As a guide, you should expect to work between 40 and 55 hours over the course of a placement, which will usually run over a term. You may need to work slightly more hours if it is your first placement delivering a self-designed course. Under no circumstances do we expect you to spend more than 60 hours working on any single placement.
That’s fine. If you are successful at assessment centre, we will send you a termly availability form to check whether you would like to work that term.
Our team will endeavour to place you at a school which is in a reasonable distance from your home address (usually no more than an hour away), and will check with you before placing you at a school to ensure it is convenient for you to get to. Some of our tutors travel a fairly long way to school placements, and others work at schools very close to home. This is dependent on which schools we work with in your area.
We will pay travel expenses to and from your school placements, so cost should not be a limiting factor.
There may be some opportunities to deliver placements online, particularly for The Brilliant Tutoring Programme.
The Brilliant Club offers a series of online modules, supplemented by three training days for Tutors a year, usually in September, November and late February, on a Saturday. These training days are run in parallel at three regional locations. The dates and locations are advertised well in advance.
The training consists of core pedagogy modules, individual support to help you design your own course, and elective modules that you can select to suit your needs.
New Tutors are required to attend a full day of training and complete all online modules. If you return to work with us on subsequent placements, you must complete Continuous Professional Development sessions.
Yes, many of our PhD tutors run multiple placements in one term or return to work with us each term or year.
You will need to ensure you can commit to a full placement, as outlined above, before you agree to work in any given term. Once we have agreed dates with you and the school, these cannot be amended as the school will have made arrangements for the programme to run within this time frame.
Working with The Brilliant Club enables researchers to develop communication skills, as they disseminate their research to a non-specialist audience, gain valuable teaching and public engagement experience and deepen their knowledge of the UK education system.
Further details about the skills developed are evidenced in our Researcher Development Case Study.
No, we will provide thorough training to all successful candidates, and will ensure you understand the aspects of the curriculum that are relevant for your role.
That’s fine! We welcome applications from researchers of all nationalities, and believe it is a real strength of our programme that school pupils are working with tutors from all over the world. We run training sessions about the UK education system as part of our training weekends, for any tutors who feel this will better equip them to work in a UK school.
You will be placed at the school that you are best suited to in terms of location and subject requirements. If there is a particular age group you would prefer, please inform your programme officer.
We work with pupils in:
– Key Stage 2 (years 5 and 6), aged 9-11
– Key Stage 3 (years 7 and 8), aged 11-13
– Key Stage 4 (years 9 and 10), aged 13-15
– Key Stage 5 (year 12), aged 16-17
We ask that schools select at least 55% of their group to meet at least one of our targeting criteria:
This is to ensure we reach a broad range of pupils who are currently underrepresented at UK universities.
We work with any non-selective state schools in the UK who would like to take part.
Schools have to pay a contribution to the programme to cover our costs; schools do not charge individual pupils, and often use a government ‘pupil premium’ fund, which is designed to support the academic progress of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The Brilliant Club successfully launched The Virtual Scholars Programme in 2020, as well as developing The Brilliant Tutoring Programme, to support pupils to make progress in core curriculum subjects. Both programmes can now be delivered online to suit school requirements. The delivery of the tutorials is synchronous – with the pupils and tutors meet for their tutorial at a set time on a weekly basis.
Assessment Centres are completed virtually and tutor training is hybrid, with both online and in person modules.
We continue to work with schools to ensure safety measures are in place and there are clear guidelines for each placement that tutors deliver in person. The safety of our tutors and the pupils we work with is incredibly important to us.