Professor Quill
Close reading without the spoilers.
English isn't about guessing the “right” opinion. Quill helps your child build their own argument about a text and back it up — in their own voice.
Named for the quill pen — a writer's oldest tool. Quill cares how you say a thing, in your own voice, not just whether you guessed the 'right' answer.
How Prof Quill teaches.
Most tutors would just show the steps. Watch Prof Quill refuse — and make the answer click instead.
Steinbeck spends a full paragraph on the rabbits and the river before George and Lennie say a word. Why open the book that way?
to make it feel calm? then it gets sad later?
Yes — and notice you said feel. Hold that. Now: which two words in that paragraph already hint at the sad part?
No, it won't do your homework.
Yes, it'll actually help.
If you're the one who'll actually use Prof Quill — here's the deal:
- Ask the dumb questionThere isn't one. No sighing, no judging, no "weren't you listening?"
- Get it wrong, loudlyWrong is just a clue. Try as many times as you need — nobody's counting.
- Your pace, your callRace ahead or take it slow. There's no class to keep up with.
- Nobody's watchingNo marks, no report home. Just you and the problem.
The KS3 english map — not a year-by-year checklist.
KS3 english isn't a list ticked off term by term. It's one connected landscape — 6 strands that feed each other. Prof Quill treats all three years as a whole, and lets your child roam it by curiosity: circling back, leaping ahead, following whatever grips them.
- Reading & comprehension
- Reading whole novels, plays & poems
- Finding meaning beyond the surface (inference)
- Spotting how a writer builds an effect
- Comparing two texts on the same theme
- Reading non-fiction & spotting bias
- Building a wide, ambitious vocabulary
- Analytical writing (PEEZL)
- Making a clear point about a text
- Choosing the best short quote as evidence
- Explaining what the writer is doing
- Zooming in on a single word's effect
- Linking it all back to the big idea
- Building a whole essay, paragraph by paragraph
- Literature: prose, drama & poetry
- A Shakespeare play (the KS3 staple)
- 19th-century fiction (Dickens, the Brontës)
- 20th- & 21st-century novels & short stories
- Reading and analysing poetry
- Theme, character & a writer's choices
- Setting a text in its time & place
- Creative & persuasive writing
- Description that appeals to the senses
- Story openings, structure & endings
- Writing to argue & to persuade
- Shaping writing for a real audience
- Finding & protecting your own voice
- Drafting, then redrafting (writing is rewriting)
- Grammar, punctuation & vocabulary
- Sentence variety for effect
- Accurate, ambitious punctuation
- Word classes & how they shift meaning
- Standard English vs. dialect & register
- Where words come from (etymology)
- Editing & proofreading your own work
- Spoken English & discussion
- Building & defending an argument out loud
- Listening, then responding to a point
- Reading aloud with meaning
- Presenting an idea clearly
- Disagreeing well & changing your mind
Prof Quill teaches the links between these strands — not six separate boxes to tick. Every strand the national curriculum requires, mapped as one whole; most parents have never seen it laid out like this. (Want it pinned to one school's exact plan instead? That's aitutors for Schools.)
Ideas don't live in one subject.
Prof Quill points out the links most tutors miss:
English isn't one more subject to revise — it's the craft of saying exactly what you mean, and weighing what others say. Quill makes that skill visible everywhere it shows up.
Prof Quill is part of one faculty.
Not eight separate chatbots — one team that shares what it learns about your child, with the Mentor checking how they're really doing before any lesson begins.
Energy-aware — on a Red day, the answer is rest. We watch wellbeing; we're not a mental-health service. Any sign of distress → Childline 0800 1111.
Adapts to your child.
However your child learns best — chatty or quiet, quick or careful, into football or fan-fiction — Prof Quill meets them there, and still won't do the work for them.
Meet Professor Quill — and the whole faculty.
One subscription unlocks the whole faculty — every subject, one £14/month founding price, locked for your child's academic life.