Brighterly

What is Brighterly?

Brighterly is a math tutorial platform that makes it easy for you to get the support of experienced math teachers for your child. You enter details describing your child's math ability and educational needs as part of your account creation process.

A typical session with Brighterly involves you selecting a session time. You'll then get a notification by SMS to remind you and an email with a link. Clicking the link will take your child to the online session, which will work with any modern web browser.

The web app that facilitates the sessions lets the tutors support their lessons and your kids' practice with engaging and well-designed activities and learning games. Each session is one-to-one, and your child will likely see the same tutor in each session.

You are not limited to the same time each week but can arrange sessions to fit in with family life.

What we love about Brighterly.

Sometimes technology does what has always been possible but just on a screen. It is always pleasing to see technology offer something new that is more effective or more convenient.

Brighterly achieves this. In the past, finding and accessing extra math support for kids involved a lot of thought and effort. Parents had to find a tutor and attempt to judge their suitability.

Attending the sessions would require parents to take their child, which ate into family time for parents and demanded childminding for other kids. Finally, the sessions felt like an extension of the school day as the tutored child completed more pen-and-paper tasks.

Brighterly makes each stage easier or better.

You have the assurance that Brighterly has chosen experienced and personable tutors. This certainty comes from knowing that this is the essence of Brighterly's service but also the generous free session that all new users can access.

The remote nature of the tutorials means that you don't have to arrange transport or childminders, nor does your child have to visit a stranger or have one come to your home. If you live in an area with few tutors offering their services, Brightlerly opens up your options.

An attractive web app supports the tutor's explanations. It gives kids new ways to approach problems and introduces game-like motivations. The units have various themes, such as dinosaurs and American History, to link with the math and provide further interest.

What skills does it teach?

Brighterly focuses on teaching math to kids and conforms to the Common Core State Standards.

What age is it appropriate for?

Brighterly's tutor sessions are suitable for kids aged 4 to 14. Kids whose math ability is above or below what is expected of their age, do not have to be limited by a curriculum. Brighterly's tutors can adapt the sessions to extend able children or support those who find math challenging.

Is Brighterly easy to use?

It is easy to join a Brighterly lesson. Younger children might need some support at first to read the prompts and to overcome any difficulties, but the process is simple enough for them to take over in future. The supporting website makes hardware requirements and the steps you need to follow clear. If there should be an issue, there is a live support facility on the website.

Within the lesson itself, the tutor will be able to direct kids and help them.

How will students benefit?

Finding schoolwork difficult is unpleasant for kids. They see their classmates move on and begin to lose confidence. Brighterly is a simple way to arrest this loss of confidence, as the tutors can match the sessions to your child's needs far better than any artificial intelligence-based app.

Kids parents often feel uncertain about helping kids with math homework. Sometimes they don't know the math or how best to explain it. Other times they worry about providing too much assistance and undermining their kid's education.

Brighterly's human tutors can help kids with their homework (if you take up the 48-class pack and above) and draw on their math and teaching experience to judge the correct level of support. The human element will also provide more warmth and encouragement for kids who feel lost in math class.

How will parents benefit?

As we've mentioned before, Brighterly's platform takes the pressure off parents who might already find themselves driving kids to after-school activities and sports. Their kids will get valuable math practice within their homes.

The convenience of Brighterly's tutorials lets parents respond quickly to their children's difficulties. If you feel your child needs extra help, perhaps because their teacher has raised the problems they have, you can get going with Brighterly far more quickly and confidently than you could with a locally sourced tutor.

Parents aren't in the dark either. They receive feedback on how their child engaged with the sessions and how they progressed.

Having Brighterly handle payments also gives parents more security, predictability, and convenience. There is a good variety of packages with different levels of features and included sessions. Whether you want to provide a quick boost or ongoing math support, you'll be able to find an option to suit.

How much does Brighterly cost?

Every new user to Brighterly is offered a free tutorial session of 45 minutes. This gateway provides a similar experience to a session in one of the courses. It is not just familiarisation but gets straight into math learning.

After the free lesson, you have a choice of packages of increasing numbers of lessons. The higher packages also include course-completion certificates, homework help and additional progress reports.

Brighterly has a very informative website that makes its service easy to understand but also includes an excellent selection of math pdf worksheets you can print and use to help your child. These are available to everyone, whether or not they subscribe.

Is Brighterly safe to use?

Parents must consent to the lessons being recorded for Brighterly to monitor the quality of the teaching.

Brighterly states that it vets and trains its teachers to ensure quality and child safety.

Parents create and manage the Brighterly account through their email. They must also give their phone number, which will aid Brighterly with account management and let the service notify parents of sessions as they are due to start.

We recommend that all children using any service on the internet know about staying safe online. In particular, they should know about not revealing any personal details and that they should speak to their parents if they feel uncomfortable with anything.

What can Brighterly improve on?

New users have to enter a telephone number. Parents should not have to enter a telephone number until they have decided to continue with the course. Moving the request for telephone numbers to the point where parents consent to continue with a Brighterly course would be much preferable.

Brighterly has clearly changed its pricing structure at some point, and remnants of the past version still exist on its otherwise excellent website. Details in the grade-specific information and the main page differ. 

Overall rating of Brighterly.

Brighterly is an impressive math tutor service. Its focus on math has allowed it to tailor its lesson content and tools effectively to support its tutors as they work with your kids.

Any review of a tutor-based platform is likely to be based on an experience slightly different to the one you might get purely down to the different personalities of the tutors. However, as you can get sessions for free, you don't have to accept any risk and the offer of a free math tutorial for your child is one you should definitely consider taking up. As Brighterly is a five-star experience, you might find yourself welcoming its tutors (virtually) into your home regularly.