Two founders

About The Russet Collective

The Russet Collective was founded by a husband and wife, Leah and William Burgess, with one intention: to put teaching of the standard Leah was given at Oxford within reach of students who cannot easily get to it. Families in market towns with no specialist for forty miles. Families abroad. Students whose school has one modern-languages teacher covering three year groups.

The question was never whether good teaching could be delivered at a distance. It was whether the distance could be made to disappear — whether a student a thousand miles away could be leaned over, have their sentence crossed out in front of them and be asked to justify the next one. Everything about how a session is run here comes out of answering that.

Leah is the Academic Director and leads every session. William runs everything that is not one.

Mrs Leah Burgess in academic dress on the day she graduated from Oxford

Leah, on the day she graduated. French & Spanish, St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

Our expertise

AQA
Pearson Edexcel
Eduqas
OCR
Cambridge IGCSE
AQA
Pearson Edexcel
Eduqas
OCR
Cambridge IGCSE

AQA, Pearson Edexcel, Eduqas, OCR and Cambridge Assessment International Education are the owners of their respective names and marks. They are shown here to say which specifications are taught. The Russet Collective is not affiliated with, approved by or endorsed by any awarding body.

The method

Write it, and defend it while it is being marked.

That is the Oxford tutorial, and it is the whole of what happens here. It is not a lecture, it is not a worksheet, and it is not somebody reading a specification aloud. A student puts a piece of work on the shared screen, watches Leah mark it in pencil, and has to defend it out loud while she is still marking.

It works because it is uncomfortable in a specific, productive way: you cannot get through a tutorial on a rehearsed answer. The second question always finds out whether the first one was thought or remembered. Every examination this practice prepares for — a Literature essay, a Language analysis, an A-Level speaking test, an Oxbridge interview — is a version of that same encounter.

Read closely

Slowly, and with a pen. Most students have never been shown what close reading physically looks like, only told to do it.

Argue in writing

A claim that could be disagreed with, held for the length of an essay, in clean English — or clean Spanish, or clean French.

III

Defend it out loud

Under questioning, in the session. This is the part almost no student ever practises, and the part every examiner is looking for.

What is taught

Four subjects, and one thing outside them.

English Language

GCSE and A-Level. Unseen extracts and technique at GCSE; linguistics, theory and the NEA at A-Level. Taught by somebody who assembled two other languages from parts and can point at the machinery of this one.

English Literature

GCSE and A-Level. Shakespeare, the nineteenth-century novel, the modern text and poetry; then a reading of your own, argued against other people’s, and the NEA.

Spanish

GCSE and A-Level. The reformed papers — dictation, read-aloud, the prescribed list — and then literary essays written in Spanish and marked in Spanish.

French

GCSE and A-Level. The same, in French, with the speaking examination prepared from January rather than from April.

Oxbridge admissions

Seasonal, priced separately, and wider in scope than the school-age teaching on purpose: humanities, modern languages, English and the social sciences, with Maths and the sciences the only exclusions. Written work and the personal statement up to 15 October, then interview preparation to Christmas.

We teach students aged 11 to 18, from Key Stage 3 through GCSE and A-Level. We do not teach Maths or the sciences, and we do not prepare students for 7+, 8+ or 11+ entrance exams — and we will not find you somebody who does.

The boards

Which specification your child is actually sitting changes the teaching.

It is asked on the application and confirmed in the first session, because it is not a detail. AQA specification B in English Literature rewards a way of writing that specification A does not. Eduqas and Edexcel weight the English Language reading questions differently. Cambridge IGCSE sits outside the domestic reform in modern languages and sets a different reading list in Literature. Teaching a candidate the wrong board’s emphasis is worse than teaching them nothing, because it feels like progress.

AQA

English Language 8700 and 7702, Literature 8702 and both A-Level specifications, Spanish 8692 and 7692, French 8652 and 7652.

Pearson Edexcel

GCSE and A-Level across all four subjects, including the Edexcel framing of the A-Level independent research project.

Eduqas

GCSE and A-Level English and modern languages, whose reading-question weightings and NEA word counts differ from AQA’s.

OCR

GCSE and A-Level English Language and Literature, including the combined Language and Literature route.

Cambridge IGCSE

First Language English, Literature in English, Spanish and French — a different structure from the domestic boards, and common for students taught outside the UK.

Not sure?

Most parents are not, and it is on the front of any past paper the school has sent home. If you cannot find it, say so on the application and Leah will work it out on the call.

How a lesson is actually run

A pencil, a shared screen, and no distance in the room.

The lesson itself is live: the marking happens on the screen while your child watches and can argue with it. The practice Leah sets for the week is marked by hand and comes back before the next one. Click through what a lesson looks like.

01

One link, and nothing to install

Sessions run on Google Meet. A browser and a link — no software, no account, no plug-in, and nothing for a parent to set up. Students join from a laptop at a kitchen table, from a school library, from a bedroom in another time zone.

Headphones make more difference than any equipment we could ask for. In a language lesson the sound is the subject.
02

The hour is decided in the room

Each session is a consultation rather than a lesson plan handed down. Leah asks what is in front of them this week — an essay they are stuck in, a paper they have just had back, a text they cannot get into, a speaking exam in April — and the hour goes there. Nothing has to be prepared or sent beforehand.

Once a week is the rhythm. It is frequent enough that the last session is still live in their head, and far enough apart that something has happened in between.
03

The screen becomes the desk

Leah shares her iPad. Whatever they are working on fills the screen at full resolution — not a blurred video feed of a page, but the page itself, large enough to read every word of. From this point the student is not watching a person talk about their work. They are watching their work being worked on.

This is the part that was integral from the beginning. Every other decision about how sessions run was made to protect it.
04

The pencil moves while you watch

A sentence is crossed out and the reason is written beside it, in the moment. An arrow moves a paragraph to where it should have been. A word is circled and a better one offered above it, and a passage worth arguing about is picked out in highlighter. Nothing is explained in the abstract and then left to be applied later — the change happens on the page, at the speed of the thinking behind it.

A verdict written on a script tells a student what was wrong. Watching the change being made tells them why, which is the part they can use again.
05

And then it is argued about

This is a tutorial, not a mark-up. Leah asks why the claim was made, pushes on the answer, and pushes again on whatever comes back. A rehearsed answer does not survive the second question, which is exactly what an examiner is doing — in a Literature essay, an A-Level speaking test or an Oxbridge interview alike.

Students are argued with from the first session. It is uncomfortable for about a fortnight and then it is the part they look forward to.
06

A parent may sit in, at any session

Without asking, and without giving a reason. Nothing here is run in private: the work is on the screen, the marking is visible, and anybody entitled to see it is welcome to.

Leah holds an Enhanced DBS certificate and is the designated safeguarding lead. William Burgess, a director who does not teach, is the deputy and holds one of his own. Neither is withheld from a parent who asks.

The other half of it

William Burgess

William is Leah’s husband and the practice’s co-founder. He read Accounting and Finance at the University of Bath and graduated with honours, and he runs everything here that is not a lesson: admissions and enquiries, student support between sessions, scheduling across time zones, and the finances.

He does not teach and never has. That division is the point of it — it means Leah’s week is teaching and marking, and a parent who needs an invoice reissued or a session moved is not writing to the person who should be reading their child’s essay.

Because student support brings him into contact with students, he holds an Enhanced DBS certificate of his own and is the deputy designated safeguarding lead. Leah is the designated safeguarding lead. Neither certificate is withheld from a parent who asks to see it, and a parent may sit in on any session without asking and without giving a reason.

The practice

Founded byLeah and William Burgess
RegisteredEngland and Wales, number 17250975
Who teachesLeah, and only Leah
Sold asBlocks of 6, 12 or 24 teaching weeks; Oxbridge by the hour
Ages11 to 18
DeliveredOnline, one to one, on Google Meet
SafeguardingLeah, lead. William, deputy. Both Enhanced DBS. Policy in full
Contactadmissions@therussetcollective.co.uk

Fit, not merit — and Leah says so on the call.

Leah reads every enquiry herself and then speaks to the family, and at the end of that conversation she says plainly whether she is the right teacher for this student. There is no ranking and no scoring, and being told no is not a verdict on your child — the commonest reason is simply that the reading and writing this asks for is not what that family is actually looking for. You are told why, and what we think would suit them better.

Nothing is promised in terms of a grade, a result, or a school or university place. Anyone offering you one of those is selling something they cannot deliver. What is promised is the teaching described above, delivered by the person named, in every session.

Enquire Now