The Brilliant Club
Outreach teaching for under-represented state schools in the UK
The Scholars Programme is run by The Brilliant Club, an award-winning university access charity. They recruit and train doctoral and post-doctoral researchers to deliver programmes of university-style teaching to pupils in schools that serve under-represented communities.
I was so intrigued by the social values that The Brilliant Club aims to deliver. Indeed, born and raised in a under-developed small town in the central area of China, the school education I received before my undergraduate study was disadvantaged and severely exam-oriented. My struggle and pains have made me fully aware of how important it is for students from under-represented background to be open-minded, confident with their potentials and more ambitious.
I therefore applied to The Scholars Programme and became a part of the charity organization after passing their rigorous screening and interview processes. I participated in their Spring 2019-20 outreach placement and was allocated to a key stage 5 state school in South England. I travelled to the school from Oxford once every two weeks, which wasn’t an easy journey as I had to take train, transfer to a bus and walk for 15+ mins. Unfortunately, the COIVD-19 pandemic outbreak interrupted the onsite tutorials halfway and I had to move them online. It was such a joyful and unforgettable experience in my life, and I was so happy to have the chance to talk to, and hopefully inspire, local students who might not have the best education resources but are positive, hard-working and thrilled by new knowledge.
I am exhibiting a few example pages of the course handbook I designed for the placement. It took a couple of months to get really inspiring training from the club and eventually to design and publish the handbook. The topic I chosen, financial mathematics, is typically an advanced subject even in universities. It was not an easy task to explain the subject with high-school maths in plain English, especially to design interactive discussion questions during the class - thanks to the energetic and responsible colleagues at the club for their careful, iterative reviewing and revisions of my drafts.
