A man of twenty three working full time in a shop, who had left school after grade ten and wanted two A levels to apply for a diploma.
His working hours ended at nine, which is when two of our three live slots have finished. So he did it almost entirely from recordings: the live classes watched the following morning before work, the library for anything he had forgotten from O level, and one to one sessions once a fortnight for the things he could not get past on his own.
The part we underestimated was marking. He needed work marked more than he needed lessons, because with no class around him he had no way of knowing whether what he was producing was any good. We moved him to a weekly marked assignment, which cost him more and was the change that mattered.
Eighteen months, two A levels, both passed, and a diploma place.
We get perhaps forty adult students a year now and they behave nothing like the school students. They watch everything recorded, they ask far better questions, and they need marking rather than teaching.
