The Brilliant Club is a UK non-profit organisation that aims to widen access to university for students from underrepresented groups. It was founded in 2011 by Jonathan Sobczyk and Simon Coyle, with partner organisations including The Sutton Trust, Teach First, Challenge Partners and Goldman Sachs. It is led by Dr Chris Wilson, Ciara Lynch and Richard Eyre. The organisation has offices in London, Leeds, Birmingham and Cardiff, and is present in all regions of England as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Activities
The Brilliant Club runs two programmes. In The Scholars Programme, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers deliver academic tutorials in non-selective state schools to pupils aged 10 to 18. Researchers delivering the programme are called PhD tutors and they are recruited, trained and placed by programme officers. During The Scholars Programme, pupils have seven tutorials with their PhD tutor which include weekly reading and writing assignments that lead to the completion of a final assignment. This assignment is marked thoroughly by PhD tutors and given a university style grade. Programmes begin with a Launch Trip at a highly-selective university, where pupils will have a campus tour, receive information advice and guidance from the university and meet their PhD tutor for the first time. The Programme finishes with a graduation event at another highly-selective university to celebrate the completion of The Scholars Programme. For the older pupils, PhD tutors design the courses based on their own area of research, whilst for younger pupils standardised courses are delivered. The Brilliant Club requires at least 55% of its pupils to meet at least one of its targeting criteria - educational measures of deprivation, no parental history of higher education, and deprivation according to postcode. The organisation's second programme, Researchers in Schools, is a teacher training programme unique to candidates with a PhD, which began in 2014. The programme aims to increase subject expertise, promote research and champion university access in schools.
Expansion
The organisation began with a pilot programme in North London in 2011, and in 2013–14, they delivered programmes to almost 4,600 pupils in over 150 schools. Since then, the programme has expanded to schools across England, the Midlands, North, East, South-East,South-West., Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In 2017–18, The Brilliant Club worked with 12,254 pupils across its programmes and special projects, in 714 schools.
Conference
The Brilliant Club holds an annual conference. This began in 2015, and was held in conjunction with King's College London and had the theme: ‘Where can we find solutions to break the link between household income and admission to the UK’s highly-selective universities?’. In 2018, The Brilliant Club welcomed delegates from schools and universities, charities and other organisations, as well as policy makers and researchers, to collaborate on this year's theme, Measuring Up: Research, Evidence and Urgency in University Access and Student Success. The charity's 2019 conference, Ready or Not? Collaborating Towards Curricula for University Readiness, will be held on Friday 12 July.
Recognition and awards
In 2011, The Brilliant Club was named the winner of a Teach First Social Innovation Award. In the same year it was one of the top ten Future 100 winners and in 2012, The Brilliant Club was listed as one of Britain's 50 New Radicals by Nesta and The Observer. In 2013, the organisation joined Ernst & Young's Accelerate programme. It was used as a case study by Equity Ideas, and mentioned in Ofsted's 2015 report 'The Most Able Students, an update in progress since June 2013'. In December 2015, the charity was named as one of The Guardian's Charity Award winners for 2015. In 2019, The Brilliant Club was awarded second place in The Sunday Times 100 Best Not-For-Profit Organisations to work for list. It was also named as one of the 75 Best Small Companies in London.
''The Scholar''
The Scholar is The Brilliant Club's academic journal of pupil work. It is published termly and showcases some of the work produced by pupils on The Scholars Programme and Uni Pathways. All assignments nominated for publication are reviewed by an expert panel of PhD researchers and only the highest scoring are published. The Scholar is the country's only academic journal dedicated to publishing university-style assignments authored by school pupils. Publishing original work is an important part of academia and introduces pupils not only to the world of research but also to the next stages of peer review and publication in academic journals.
