As a university access charity, we work with the students who most benefit from the support of our programmes. We require that at least 70% of the students registered on The Scholars Programme meet at least one of the following criteria:
We work with any non-selective state schools in the UK who would like to take part.
We work with any university that wants to support students as they transition to university and succeed in their studies. Many take part to support targets in their Access and Participation Plan, and to offer PhD researchers the opportunity to coach.
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 less advantaged backgrounds.
Universities pay a contribution to the programme to cover costs such as delivery, coach pay and resources. This fee is subsidised by fundraising, which also allows us to keep Uni Prep (webinars and resources for Year 13 students) free for schools.
We have lots of tutors and coaches on Student/Tier 4 visas who work with us successfully within their visa requirements.
Our placement types vary. We estimate, as an example, that tutors delivering a Key Stage 4/5 Scholars Programme placement and creating their own handbook for the first time will work up to 57 hours in a given term for one placement. This will include around 25 hours in training and preparation before the first tutorial, and then around 32 hours spent on ongoing preparation and delivery.
Once a Scholars Programme placement begins, tutors usually deliver 2 hours in-person each week, with some additional preparation time in between each tutorial to spend on homework review, placement related admin, and assignment marking for later tutorials. The largest expected chunk of work would be 7 hours for marking of the final assignments per placement.
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.
What if I was educated outside the UK?
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.
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.
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.
We welcome applications from researchers doing a practice-based PhD. If designing your own course, we will work closely with you to ensure that elements of your practice are accessible to pupils. The key guidelines that we work within are:
The application form should take no more than 1 hour to complete.
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.
The payment amount for each type of Scholars Programme placement (as of Summer 2025), along with expected hours, are as follows:
| Placement Type | Hours worked | London
Placement payment |
Non-London
Placement payment |
| Key Stage 2-3 – The Brilliant Club designed course (Standard placement payment) | 40-45 | £698.48 | £635.44 |
| Key Stage 4-5 – New Tutor, designing and delivering new course for first time (Standard placement payment + Top up for designing a new course handbook) | 55-57 | £884.74 | £804.89 |
| Key Stage 4-5 – Returning tutor, delivering their self-designed course again (Standard placement payment) | 40-45 | £698.48 | £635.44 |
The payment amount for a Join the Dots placement varies depending on the number of undergraduate students in a group. The amount (as of Summer 2025), along with expected hours, are as follows:
| Hours worked | London
Placement payment |
Non-London
Placement payment |
|
| 5-8 students in group | 48.75 | £756.68 | £688.39 |
| 1-4 students in group | 30.25 | £469.53 | £427.15 |
A typical Scholars Programme placement would be approximately 14 hours of contact time in school (spread across the 7 weeks).
A typical Join the Dots placement involves approximately 25 hours contact time (for a group of 8 students) spread across 5 months. This includes 1-1 and group sessions.
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.
Yes, many of our PhD tutors run multiple placements in one term or return to work with us each term or year.
While we will try our best to offer a placement/s each term if a tutor is available, unfortunately we can’t guarantee we will be able to offer any placements.
There is no enforced commitment for number of placements in a year; however, we ask that you only apply if you can take on one placement per 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.
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.
You will be placed at the school that you are best suited to in terms of location and subject requirements. We work with pupils in:
The Brilliant Club is able to provide factual references for those that have tutored with us. Please email tutorhr@thebrilliantclub.org to request a reference.
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.