Schools and colleges can request the stream of the course to be delivered. Please note that preferences cannot be guaranteed as they are dependent on the availability of PhD tutors in your area.
For tutorials 1-5, tutors will teach pupils in two groups: A and B.
All tutorials last 60 minutes and are taught in groups of 7.
In tutorial 5, pupils will be asked to create a draft Final Assignment.
For tutorials 6 and 7, tutors will provide feedback in individual one-to-one sessions (lasting approximately 10 minutes).
Schools can choose to hold tutorials after school but this tends to have a detrimental effect on students’ attendance, energy levels and quality of work. The Brilliant Club strongly recommends that tutorials take place during the day.
The Scholars Programme includes an experience at a competitive university, which we call a Graduation Event.
What is the Graduation Gvent?
All pupils that submit Final Assignments are invited to attend the Graduation Event. The purpose of this is to celebrate pupils’ achievements, whilst also providing them with an insight into a competitive university.
Your Programme Officer will send you an Event Information Pack in advance of each trip, with arrival arrangement details and a risk assessment. The Brilliant Club will coordinate the day and deliver sessions to students. We ask schools to organise the transport to and from the universities, and to notify us of dietary and mobility requirements at least two weeks in advance. We try, where possible, to provide trips based on travel times between your school and the university. In more rural areas, travel time can be significantly higher. If you have requests to visit certain universities or locations further afield, please let us know and we will try our best to accommodate.
The expectation is that students are accompanied by at least one teacher, with the appropriate ratio of pupils to teachers to be determined by the school. Please note, we strongly recommend that the Lead Teacher attends the trips.
Our community of more than 1,000 PhD tutors is what makes The Brilliant Club unique. For some pupils, the only doctor they may have ever met is in a medical setting, but our programmes open up the world of academic research and give young people the opportunity to study university-level work in an accessible manner.
Our PhD Tutors have either completed or are currently studying for a PhD at a higher education institution. Pupils work closely with these PhD researchers on topics that very few people will have had the chance to learn about. ‘Lying with Statistics versus Capturing the Truth’ or ‘Y’all Don’t Hear Me Though: Hip Hop as Political Resistance’ are just two recent courses that pupils took part in, thanks to the passion and interests of our PhD tutors.
Our PhD Tutors complete two full days of training, specific to the age group they will be working with. The training is designed and delivered by qualified teachers and experts in university-style teaching and learning. PhD Tutors are introduced to basic tutorial pedagogy such as planning, questioning and assessment; aspects of classroom management; and codes of professional conduct. Our PhD Tutors are required to have an enhanced disclosure DBS check before they are placed into schools.
The majority of our PhD tutors currently come from the universities in which we have formal partnerships. A number of our tutors also come from smaller institutions like the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as research laboratories like Cancer Research UK.
Our recruitment process consists of three main stages: 1) application form, 2) assessment centre and 3) training weekend. We assess all candidates against the skills and values that we believe are crucial to the delivery of excellent university-style tutorials, and cross reference this against relevant guidelines from OFSTED (schools) and the HEA (universities). The application process to become a tutor with us is competitive, typically accepting 50% of applicants.
Yes. PhD tutors are paid for the work that they undertake in schools. As such, we expect them to act as professionals at all times, both in terms of adhering to appropriate codes of conduct and maintaining a sense of professional pride in the work that they do.
The Brilliant Club is a registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 1147771) and Scotland (SC048774).
The Brilliant Club is a non-profit organisation and has a range of funding streams. Schools and universities both contribute to the cost of delivering a programme, which is further subsidised by contributions from grant-making organisations.
Yes. The Brilliant Club has public liability insurance (to the value of £10,000,000) for Brilliant Club employees and PhD tutors.
Yes. The Brilliant Club has child protection and data protection policies. If you would like to see these, please ask your Programme Officer for a copy.
Yes. The Brilliant Club has a GDPR statement and data protection policy and has processes in place to comply with GDPR rules. If you would like to see these, please ask your Programme Officer for a copy.