Teachers & Parents | Academus Education

About Academus

Academus is a non-profit education service for secondary school students. We specialise in Classical Education: Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient History and Classical Civilisation. However, we also offer talks and Think Tanks on a variety of topics relating to the Ancient World.

Who we are?

Academus is an organisation run by university students for school students. Our Academic Team is comprised of undergraduate and postgraduate students who are passionate about Classics and increasing access within education.

All of our staff are studying at top UK institutions and are specialising in the field of Classics. Each tutor is specially selected for their role. We only allow tutors to teach modules that they have specialised in to an advanced level as part of their own studies.

We also work alongside a number of universities, academics and organisations such as The Classical Association to make sure that all of our outputs are of the highest academic standard.

How are you teaching your material?

We use a number of different platforms to deliver our services. Our Summer School takes place on the Virtual Learning Platform, Moodle. Our Easter Crash Course and Digital Think Tanks a re hosted through Zoom Webinars. We also use Microsoft Teams for our more personal services such as 1-1 Coaching.

Within these online mediums, we use different teaching styles to try and get the best out of our students. For many of our larger events and talks, we use lecture-style teaching to enable as many people to attend as possible. During our summer school, we split our teaching between seminar-style classes which are capped at 20 students and small group teaching capped at 8 students.

We use the smaller group teaching for our language courses to enable students to get the most out of their language learning. This way they can ask questions whenever they want and be under the close supervision of a language tutor.

How do you keep everything safe?

If you refer to the 'Commitment to Care' section on our website you can look at our safeguarding and privacy policies which highlight all of our protocols.

We also have an in-house safeguarding team who are constantly reviewing our security and looking at how we can make sure our students are as safe as possible.

We also make sure that all of our Academic Team have an Enhanced DBS Check and have attended our intensive training programme.

Can you cater for special educational needs?

Yes, in short. We can cater for most special educational needs providing you inform us in advance. We work alongside pedagogical experts to make sure that all of our content is as accessible as possible.

We make sure that our tutors have the relevant SEN training and we have a designated SENCO.

If you have any queries about our SEN policies please get in touch with our Academic Manager.

How does your content compare to school syllabuses?

Whilst some of our content may overlap with GCSE and A-Level specifications our courses are designed very differently.

The majority of our senior syllabuses and talks are designed as a stepping stone towards Classics at Higher Education Level. Many of the courses are similar to modules taught at universities as they were designed alongside university academics.

Our language modules at present are solely designed to be an introduction to Latin and Greek so they only cover the basics but form a good foundation for any student looking to get a qualification in Latin and Greek.

For more information on what we are teaching please have a look at the following:

Are your resources accessible for school age students?

Our resources are designed as a stepping stone into formal scholarship for school students.

In order to maximise the articles' accessibility, we haven't tried to overload them with theoretical concepts, particular scholars or complex classical ideas unless absolutely necessary.

Instead, we have tried to produce concise and interesting pieces on the Classical World that go beyond school specifications and textbooks.

Do you organise specific outreach events for schools?

This is something we are considering at the moment. Currently, we have lots of events occurring on a regular basis that we actively encourage both you and your students attend.

We have also recently launched our Academus Workshops which are events specifically tailored to schools. These workshops are designed for classes or larger groups to engage with the Classical World in a unique way.

For more information please refer to our Workshops page.

Am I allowed to sit in on your teaching classes?

Ultimately, this is up to the discretion of each individual student. If they don't mind having an adult observing them whilst they are learning then you are more than welcome. However, we request that you put the student's need first.

If you are to sit in on our classes we do request that you do so from a point of observation and refrain from answering questions designed for our students or, interrupting classes.

Whilst we understand you are keen to get an idea of what we do, our students have to come first. If you would like to speak to our team about our resources and teaching please contact us and we can arrange a meeting.