Study skills speaker for high schools

Q: How long does a study skills speaker session run and what does it cost?

2 hours in one sitting. Seminars start from $3,525 AUD, plus travel if your school is outside South East Queensland. Tell us your school, year level, and the term you are aiming at, and we will come back inside 2 working days with dates and a quote.

Q: Do you travel to our state?

Yes. Glen Gerreyn is based in South East Queensland and presents in every state and territory in Australia, including Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, and the ACT. Travel is quoted on top of the seminar fee.

Glen Gerreyn is an Australian study skills speaker who travels throughout Australia and internationally, presenting in person to Years 10 to 12 on your campus. The session is called Brilliant Young Mind, it runs 2 hours, pen and paper only. Every student leaves with a written study routine, a way to manage the phone, and a grade goal in their own handwriting.

A student from St Luke's Anglican School in Bundaberg emailed after his results came out. He'd sat in the seminar at the start of the year, written down a number, and gone to work on it. He finished with an ATAR of 99.65, the highest in Bundaberg.

He didn't get smarter between the seminar and his results. He got a system, and he ran it for 10 months.

That's the whole argument for bringing in a study skills speaker. Your students aren't short on intelligence. They're short on attention, and the phone in their pocket was designed by some of the best engineers alive to take it. Year 11 starts feeling like a race they're losing before they've worked out what they're running for.

What the seminar covers

Attention and the device

What the phone is actually doing to a teenage brain mid-task, and the specific rules that put the student back in charge of it.

How memory works

Why re-reading notes feels productive and does almost nothing. What to do instead, in the time they already have.

A routine they write down

Students build their own daily and weekly study block in the workbook. Not a template we hand them. Theirs, in their handwriting.

The room they study in

Desk, light, noise, clutter, and where the phone lives. The physical setup nobody teaches and every student can fix that night.

Grit, growth mindset, and flow

The vocabulary for what happens when work gets hard, so a bad result becomes information instead of a verdict.

A number on the wall

Every student sets an ATAR or grade goal, writes it, and decides where it's going up at home. Vague ambition doesn't survive Term 3.

The model underneath all of it is straightforward. Hope is a skill, and the four things holding it up are grit, optimism, courage, and resilience. That's what I've spent 25 years refining across more than 750 schools.

What students write back

These arrived by email, unprompted, weeks or years after the seminar. Their words, tidied only for spelling. They come from schools in 6 states and territories.

ATAR 99.65

I wanted to thank you for the framework you provided me about success and hope earlier in the year. I am currently the highest ATAR in Bundaberg with a result of 99.65. You have been such an inspiration. You talk got me through Year 12. I appreciate everything you have done to help.

Year 12 student, St Luke's Anglican School, Bundaberg, QLD

I am decently smart but I find it hard to focus in study and sometimes to get motivated. But your speech has given me lots of strategies. Since your talk I have made a timetable that includes study, my part time job, running twice a week, and gym 3 times a week.

Year 11 student, Scotch College, Perth

ACT

I was having trouble getting the motivation to do my homework, so I reread the booklet we filled out today. It put me in a positive mindset and I ended up smashing out my homework and getting it all right!

Year 10 student, Daramalan College, Canberra

NSW

I graduated with an ATAR of 97.7 and I achieved the DUX of my school. I always kept my notebook from your seminars and made sure to never forget the lessons you taught me because I knew one day I'll look back and be proud that I genuinely applied your strategies and persevered through the struggle of HSC.

Year 12 student, St Patrick's Marist College, Dundas

VIC

Thank you for telling me that motivation is not enough, that it is commitment that will get me places. I have written "are you committed?" on my walls and diaries underneath my goal ATAR and study scores now, and whenever I don't feel like doing something I ask myself that, and it works. My goal at the start of the year was 95, and I got 96.

Year 12 student, Mentone Girls' Grammar

My small win yesterday was staying on task when I was doing homework. I usually lose focus when I am meant to be doing homework, by looking at unrelated articles, watching YouTube, or playing games, but yesterday, this didn't happen, and I was focused the entire time.

Year 10 student, Guildford Grammar School, Perth

NSW

Today on the bus home I planned out my evening so I would have enough study time and enough basketball practise at home. My iPhone is locked away where it can't distract me from study!

Year 9 student, St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill

VIC

I wrote down my dream ATAR of 90 in the booklet you gave to us, put it on my vision board, put it on my mirror, on my wall with all my posters, on my ceiling to look up to at night. And Glen, I got a 96.9 ATAR. I told you it was my dream to be a Clinical Psychologist, and psychology was my best score of 48.

Year 12 student, Catholic Ladies College

Thank you for the talk today, it had me engaged for the entire 90 minutes. After this speech, I have deleted TikTok as well as found a mate to keep me accountable. I'm also currently working on a vision board.

Year 12 student, Scotch College, Perth

I had basically given up on painting and drawing after the study load increased, but I found that it wasn't that I didn't have enough time. I was wasting my time scrolling.

Year 10 student, Saint Ignatius College

VIC

I have always struggled with reading due to my anendophasia (lack of inner voice), it makes it very hard to focus on reading. Instead of giving up and reading without understanding as I always did, I listened to your advice and searched for an audio book I could read along with to mimic an inner monologue. I was finally able to understand what I was reading and could read for 30 minutes straight.

Year 12 student, Bentleigh Secondary College

What it does at the school level

One student's ATAR is a story. A cohort acting on it is a result. Scotch College in Swanbourne, Perth ran Brilliant Young Mind with Year 11 and The Leadership Effect with Year 12, both in a single school day. Pen and paper, no phones, a hall full of boys. Over the days that followed, 30 students emailed us. No teacher set that as homework, and no one chased it. Most had already started the work before they wrote.

Some of your tips and tricks really inspired me to create a day-to-day schedule and an action plan for the next 2 years. I have set my goals across all aspects of my life, including rowing, academic and uni.

Year 11 student, Scotch College, Perth

That's the number worth watching when you're deciding whether a seminar earned its timetable slot. Compliance doesn't send emails. The full write-up, with 12 more student emails, is here: the Scotch College case study.

There are another 301 of these, sorted by state and seminar, if you want to keep reading: read all 301 student reviews.

How it runs

2 hours, in person, on your campus. One sitting. Hall, theatre, or gym, whatever holds the cohort.
Australia-wide. Based in South East Queensland, presenting in every state and territory as a study skills speaker across metro, regional, and remote schools.
Years 10 to 12. Works across every academic band and every postcode. Year 10 gets the most runway; Year 12 gets the most urgency.
Pen and paper. No phones in the room. Total respect, quiet enough to think. It's the single biggest lever on whether anything survives the walk back to class.
Every student gets the workbook. The system they build in the room comes home to the desk that night.
From $3,525, plus travel if your school sits outside South East Queensland. Email us and we'll quote your dates.
Partner schools get the Staffroom. Lesson follow-ups and printables your teachers can run the week after.

Booking a whole-cohort session on a broader theme instead? Start with the motivational speaker for high schools page. If you just want something for your students this week, the free study tools for students are there to download.

Common questions

What does a study skills speaker actually teach?

How learning works: attention, memory, routine, and how to hold a goal under pressure. Ours runs 2 hours, in person, for Years 10 to 12. Students write their own study routine and grade goal in a workbook they take home.

Is this a keynote or a full study skills seminar?

A full study skills seminar. 2 hours, with a workbook, written exercises, and a goal every student sets themselves. A 40-minute keynote can lift a room. It won't change what a Year 11 does on Tuesday night.

Which year levels get the most out of it?

Years 10 to 12. Year 10 has the most time to build the habit before it counts, which is why schools who run it in Year 10 tend to rebook it. Year 12 responds to the urgency. Some schools split the cohort and run two sittings on the same day.

How long does it run and what does it cost?

2 hours in one sitting. Seminars start from $3,525, plus travel if your school is outside South East Queensland. Tell us your school, year level, and the term you're aiming at, and we'll come back inside 2 working days with dates and a quote.

When in the school year should we book it?

Two windows work best. Start of the year, when students are setting up habits that have to last 40 weeks. Or 6 to 8 weeks out from an exam block, while there's still time to change something. The lead-in to exams books out first, so get in early.

Do you travel to our state?

Yes. Glen is based in South East Queensland and presents in every state and territory. The students quoted above are in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, and the ACT. Travel is quoted on top of the seminar fee.

Do you run it online?

No. In person only, on your campus. The seminar depends on a quiet room, students writing by hand, and no screens between them and the front. That doesn't survive a video link, so we don't offer one.

What happens after the seminar?

Students go home with the workbook and the routine they wrote in it. Partner schools get access to the Staffroom, where teachers can pick up lesson follow-ups and printables to run the week after. The seminar is the spark. What your teachers do on Monday is the fire.

Check your date

Tell us your school, your year level, and the term you're aiming at. We'll come back with availability and a quote inside 2 working days.

Booking a study skills speaker for a senior cohort is a Term 1 decision more often than a Term 3 one.

Check availability

Want the full outline, the run sheet, and the workbook contents? The seminar page has all of it: Brilliant Young Mind.