Group classes on Sherpa allow you to run courses on specific subjects or topics with up to 6 students at once.

How you run them and what you teach is completely up to you - you can run intensive holiday revision classes for academic subjects, or after-school & weekend extracurricular lessons on topics that students wouldn't get the chance to learn in school!

For 'Why can I only teach private classes?' Click here.

Setting up your first group class is really easy. First, just navigate to your group classes page, where you can choose to create a new group class in the top right.

Here, you choose the general settings for your group class - this includes how much you want to charge per session, per student. You can then choose the minimum and maximum number of students that can join your class.
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From experience, we recommend keeping the minimum to 2 students and up to a maximum of 6, selecting a rate that you would be happy with, assuming only 2 students sign up to avoid having to cancel the class.
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This rate does not include the platform fee that will be taken prior to payment. To help you decide, we will display your range of take-home pay depending on the number of students.
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If the class does not reach the minimum number of students 24 hours before the class starts, your class will need to be cancelled by you, and the students will automatically be refunded.

This is just setting up the type of group class - you add the session information later.

Once you've created your class and added a cover image, you can then start to add sessions to your course:

From the feedback we have received so far, parents & students are reluctant to purchase a group class with more than 2 or 3 sessions. This is because they are often unable to commit to all of the session dates in advance, or they are only interested in one session topic and don't want to pay for others that are not as useful to them. Some exceptions exist where an intensive revision course over a short period of time (eg. half term) can work well.
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As it stands, users cannot purchase individual sessions within a group class. Our system only allows them to purchase all sessions in advance as a bundle, so they cannot be refunded for individual sessions within it. Please keep this in mind when setting up your class structure.
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For that reason, it's much better to split up a longer course covering several topics into multiple classes with a maximum of 1 or 2 sessions in each class on the same topic. This way, students are able to book onto individual courses that suit their needs.

Students are mainly looking for help from a tutor in areas of a topic they struggle to study by themselves, rather than just a revision lecture. Ensure you incorporate previous exam examples into topic revision and account for some time to test each student's knowledge, keeping things interactive while giving feedback in the context of exam assessments.
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You can now speak 1-on-1 with a group class student through the breakout room feature in our online classroom. This makes it possible to review some group work and give personalised feedback while others work on something else.

Ensure you have added at least 1 session to your class, and then a green button labelled "Submit for Approval" will show. Clicking that will notify the Sherpa team it is ready to review.

We currently require any group class, whether private or public, to be approved by our team to ensure they align with our core values and check for any clerical errors during the setup stage. This is usually done within 1 working day.

We have two types of classes, Public and Private.

Posting Public classes is not currently available.
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Our eventual goal is to allow all tutors to post Public Group Classes that are available on Sherpa's Discover page, but in order to balance our current demand, we are not currently accepting requests to make group classes public. We will not respond to these requests. We've written a full description of the reasons for this here.

For Private classes, you'll need to advertise your own class. You can do this by inviting your own students, as well as any other marketing ideas you have! This could be posted on local Facebook groups or shared through your own tutoring profile or website.

Once you've set up your private group class, you'll see a button to copy the link to access the Group Class Purchase Page directly as shown in the clip below:

You'll receive an email each time a new student joins your class, and they will send an automated platform message to you so you can talk to them ahead of the first session to share any resources.

Joining group classes works very similarly to regular 1:1 bookings, in which you can join the class from your 'bookings page' 10 minutes before each session is due to start.

You can also prep your lessons in advance by going to your Upcoming Bookings and clicking 'View' on an upcoming group class.

You can click the drop-down arrow on each session and click 'Prepare Notes' to upload resources to the classroom prior to the lesson starting.

When it's time to join the class, the Launch button will be active 10 minutes before the start of the lesson, visible as normal from your bookings page. Click this to join the classroom.

Most students will be quite shy when entering a group class environment full of new people. It is up to the tutor to draw on their experience and start the group class in a manner that makes all participants feel welcome. Play a "name game" or start off with a few easy questions to encourage group participation.

These classes are not intended to be lectures, but interactive sessions where each student gets to be involved, voice any concerns or weaknesses, and hopefully have them resolved by the end of the class. You may find some students can teach each other the answer...if you let them!

The tutor MUST teach the whole class with their camera and microphone ON and encourage all students to do the same. This is important for nurturing a safe and approachable environment while enabling clearer and more open communication between the tutor and the students.

It is just as important as one-to-one lessons to pay attention to each student and keep them engaged while ensuring they leave the class with some new knowledge or confidence.

You could also send pre-prepared resources or summarised notes to the students in advance through the messages page so they can follow along or participate.

After the class, students will be able to access a recording of the class.

Sometimes, a student or parent may book a class accidentally or not realise they clash with another class. We allow any purchaser of a group class to get a full refund up to 24 hours in advance. You will be responsible for knowing how to do this as they may ask you directly, however, Sherpa may refund a student's group class space if they contact us first.

With less than 24 hours' notice, it is up to you whether you would like to offer a refund. This may affect whether the class goes ahead or not so we leave this up to the tutor's discretion.

Contact us with any concerns if you are faced with cancelling a class that is close to the minimum attendance.

Read more about how to refund a student in your group class here.

Group classes need to be manually cancelled by the tutor if they are not willing for it to go ahead with the current number of students.

We send an email 48 hours before it is due to start if the minimum attendance has not been reached to remind you to make a decision with plenty of warning to any parties involved.

Read more about how to cancel your class here.

Private group classes are set up and marketed by the tutor and incur the regular platform fee of 28% + 2.7% payment processing fee. More information can be found on that here.

Payment occurs separately from your monthly payday payment for now, once the group class has finished. Contact us for any more details.