What’s new: Personal Academic Tutoring 2025/26

The purpose of Personal Academic Tutoring (PAT) at UCL is to provide academic and personal development guidance and support to undergraduate and postgraduate taught students as they study their course. See more on how PAT fits into our wider student academic support models at UCL below. A Personal Academic Tutor should be a student’s ‘go-to-person’ for checking-in on academic progress or where to go for more specific help and support available at UCL. Personal Academic Tutoring is one form of academic support provided to students, alongside support and guidance offered by module and course leads and department administrative teams.  

UCL’s new Personal Academic Tutor Policy is now available in Chapter 14 of the Academic Manual. It establishes baseline expectations for the delivery of Personal Academic Tutoring for undergraduate and postgraduate taught students. It is anticipated that these minimum expectations will be realised and/or extended in different ways by individual departments and divisions. The policy notes that Personal Academic Tutors must offer three meetings per academic year for each student they support (i.e. one per term). At least one of these should be a 1-2-1. These routine meetings offer students the opportunity to: 

• check in on academic progress​, 
• identify academic, personal and career goals​, 
• discuss how they plan to achieve their goals and track progress​, 
• identify areas for academic improvement, ​ 
• reflect on module selection and student choices​, 
• and enquire about other forms of support provided by UCL and UCL policies and processes that are there to support them in their studies. 

Based on these discussions, Personal Academic Tutors can also support students by signposting them to other forms of support provided by the university as required, including specialist support provided by UCL Careers, Academic Communications Centre, and Student Support and Wellbeing Services (SSWS). 

Every UCL department should have a Department Tutor or equivalent. There are refreshed Personal Academic Tutor and Department Tutor role descriptors in Chapter 12 of the Academic Manual which provide details on the normal scope and duties associated with these roles.   

The new Personal Academic Tutoring Policy establishes that effective Personal Academic Tutoring relies on meaningful engagement with and from students and that students are expected to attend Personal Academic Tutor Meetings. To help encourage students to positively engage with personal academic tutoring, we have refreshed our personal academic tutoring webpages for students.  

Next steps 

HEDS (Arena), continue to refresh their Personal Academic Tutor staff webpages, including available training. Via this webpage, Personal Academic Tutors can find the link to the PAT dashboard which provides them with access to their tutee’s student record, attendance and academic progress data all in one place. Guidance on the dashboard is available on the PAT dashboard FAQ page.  

We are currently collating resources and guidance documents, generated through a successful pilot of the Personal Academic Tutoring recommendations with 19 departments across UCL over the last academic year, into a new PAT Hub (SharePoint) to provide a one-stop-shop / repository for colleagues. Watch out for updates on accessing this site. 

PAT Essentials training for all staff will be made available later this academic year. This short online training session aims to assist Personal Academic Tutors in their role and give an overview of the wide-ranging support available to staff and students at UCL, such as Student Support and Wellbeing Services and the Employee Assistance Programme.  

Other types of academic support available to students 

PAT is part of the wider student academic support models at UCL. 

Other areas of student support in departments include:  

Other Central UCL Student Services include: