A 19 year old Berkshire student with a passion for science has launched a new on-line programme designed to dramatically reduce the cost of hiring a tutor for GCSE chemistry.
According to Arran Paul, who lives with his family in Bagshot Road, Ascot and was Head Boy at Charters School, Sunningdale, students can pay anything between £40-60 per hour for a session with a tutor. He said that the proportion of tutored pupils has risen by more than a third over the past decade, from 18% in 2005 to 25% now. The average cost of a private tutor to help a child, usually to pass an exam, is £24-60 an hour, according to the Sutton Trust, which aims to improve social mobility through education. One in four children aged 11-16 attending a state school now receives help from a private tutor at some point. Children at private schools are about “twice as likely” to have been tutored.
Arran's new enterprise, known as Positive Charge, allows students studying GCSE chemistry to log into its website and take a front row seat to over 60 course specific videos lasting for between 4 - 14 minutes showing practical chemistry demonstrations for a fraction of hiring a tutor. For £15.99 a month students have access to a video library showing a variety of different lessons which come with detailed course notes. Positive Charge lessons can be viewed on demand at any time of the day or night. A further ten videos will be added to the collection at the end of May.
In addition to chemistry students across the country, Positive Charge's chemistry lessons can be viewed by learners undergoing long-term treatment in hospital or people with special educational needs or those schooled at home. The programmes are also suitable for mature students, young offenders, foreign students seeking UK qualifications and international schools outside of Britain teaching the UK curriculum. Students who are deaf or suffer from hard of hearing can also watch the videos using close caption explanations of what is taking place in the programmes. The lessons can also be used by schools with small budgets available for chemistry or in overcrowded classrooms where people at the back of a room are unable to clearly see an important chemistry demonstration.
"This is a one-stop shop to find everything a GCSE chemistry student needs to pass an exam," said Arran. "All our videos have been shot in a professional studio and are presented by experienced and passionate chemistry teachers, most from the Berkshire area. They all have an understanding of the importance of science in the modern world and the importance of GCSEs. As a team, we want to make a real difference and believe we can help Chemistry students realise their potential. Our mission is to deliver high quality GCSE science resources."
In September Arran will begin to train as a broadcast engineer with the BBC through a programme run in association with Birmingham City University. In his absence Positive Charge will be run by Arran's father, Adrian, who has helped him develop the company and works as a technical specialist in theatre, television, film, radio, conferences and special events.
As a parent, Adrian wanted to find affordable, high quality support and resources for his children as they progressed through the education system but was unable to find something suitable. Arran, who also identified a distinct lack of learning resources for GCSE science students, worked with his father to develop Positive Charge. Together father and son plan to further develop the programme to include videos covering biology and physics in 2018.
Students can access a selection of free lessons by visiting www.positive-charge.co.uk/what-we-do.