Edward: This morning I'm off to Loughborough College, I've just left the RNIB College and I'm going over to mainstream, and this morning you're going to come and look at me do a bit of an arranging lesson we're arranging to Christmas pieces which are Jingle Bells Rock and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, so it should be quite a good lesson this morning I think.

# Jingle Bell Rock

Edward: I'm totally blind, I've been totally blind since birth. I play a lot of instruments - I play piano, guitar and drums. That's what I'm learning to do on my course, I'm learning to gain more skills on my course, and play more instruments and learn more about music.

# Jingle Bell Rock

Edward: I though Loughborough College might be a chance for me to experience what it was like living away from home, and also I though I'd try something new and see what it was like. I'd heard good reports about this place, And I though I wouldn't mid coming to have a look at it.

Ryan: I'm originally from Glasgow in Scotland, but I now live in Chesterfield. I'm studying, taking my English GCSEs and doing the Certificate of Achievement over at Loughborough College.

Ryan: I go over to the college on Mondays and Tuesdays. I'm taking my English GCSEs, and I do Maths and English here, I do ICT, ILS - Independent Living Skills - where you do your washing, cooking. I do a CoPE qualification, that's where I'm organising a childrens' party, you've got to organise it and write it and sort everything out and other activities.

Rhiannon: I'm a student at the RNIB Loughborough College. I do various work, various classes, I do numeracy, literacy, ...02:17... Travel in the Community, and most things! I've got four students in my class, we get two LSAs, so two for every student. One's with one group of two, and the other's with the other group, so we get various different bits of help. We get to socialise with our friends, after lessons we come here, wait 'til 5 o'clock 'til we have our tea, and we just chat, just chat to or friends and have fun!

Tony: Building relationships with other people is important. It might be with friends, it might be with a partner, it might be at work, but knowing how other people tick and how to make yourself fit yourself in is absolutely crucial. For a good number of our students, getting qualifications is really important, because our academic range is very wide. Some people come in at pre-entry level with severe learning difficulties, but at the other extreme we have people doing A-level equivalent qualifications. For them the qualification is clearly important, either to get to university or whatever else they want to do when they leave.

Tony: We are co-located - so we share a campus - with Loughborough College, which is a mainstream college.

Teacher: This is the base room, basically, for all the learners that are on courses in Loughborough College, and also this where we do all the co-ordinating for all the lessons in both colleges. We have Afif in the corner there, working independently. The learners have all got pidgeon holes, all their work is returned to those pidgeon holes when it's been processed into their medium, be it braille or be it large print. All the typing of those notes goes on in this room as well, and any out-of-class support that the learners book can be in this room as well. 

Tony: It means that we can offer pretty well the full range of courses that would be available in a mainstream college. Now that's something that a small specialist college otherwise would never be able to do.

Tony: Wherever possible we're looking to get people into work, and from day one of the course we're talking to people about what they're going to do next, what type of activity - employment or other activity - they're going to be involved in.

Joanne: What's my favourite part of the day? Working with different people and helping out, basically. Doing whatever they give me to do, basically. What they tell me to do, I just do, and I love it really.

Joanne [to colleague]: Thank you very much.

Tony: We say to people, as soon as they come, that we're thinking about the day they leave. Then we smile and explain that's not because we don't want people to be there, but because the aim is that people should not be dependent on specialist education support for the rest of their life. 

Edward: I think the standard of teaching is really high-class. They're really easy people to talk to if you've got a problem - they'll sort you out straight away, and they're up for doing anything to help people out.

Ryan: We've got staff that, they always, if you need anything, they'll do it.

Rhiannon: The LSA's help us with our coursework and homework, and, well, everything. The LSAs are really good here.

Teacher: Because we do have a range of equipment which can support people in different classes, I think we offer unusually good support. Obviously you've got to teach and you've got to be able to write notes up and you've got to be able to do assessments and things like that, so it's not quite as obvious as it sounds but actually dealing with people and actually teaching them, and getting pleasure out of finding they can actually accomplish something new.

Cooking teacher: We help them, probably, hopefully, to become self-catering. If they're here on a two-year course, they do their independent living skills, and then the following year hopefully some of them will be able to go and be self-catering over at Stan Bell.

Cooking teacher: We do try in the kitchen also to, to let them do most things on their own. If they make the odd mistake then they learn by it. We try to stand back as much as we can and let them get on with things. Everything's labelled in braille as well, so it's easily accessible for them.

Music teacher: They do, I think, an awful lot of extra-curricula activities here, which I think is excellent. There's been guitar work that's gone on, I've done one-off sessions with quite a lot of students here, so I think they have quite a thriving music department, we've got some really exciting new opportunities coming up next year for them as well, so it's lovely. Love it, yes. Some days it's very hard, but it is incredibly rewarding, just for that tiny little achievement that somebody's managed to do in a lesson.

Ryan: I live over at the residence at Stan Bell. It's like a two-minute walk to here.

Edward: We've got three communal lounges, there's a first-floor lounge, second-floor lounge and a ground-floor lounge. There's a messy room where people can go and play snooker, or do some pictures, artwork, play an organ or a piano, whatever they want to do. And then we've got the flats for living accommodation, in the flats there's a few bedrooms, and there's a kitchen in every single flat so that you can go and get a drink or a snack whenever you want one really, when you're in a flat.

Rhiannon: You've got loads of space, there's six rooms in one flat. Each girl...six girls in one flat, six boys in another flat.

Edward: Yeah, I'm really comfortable in my own flat. I've got all the facilities I could possibly want. In my bedroom there's a nice bed, decent size, then there's a desk, and I put all my things on it, and then you have your own bathroom which has a toilet, a shower and a basin in it, so really it's like a hotel room.

Rhiannon: Most of my friends are in my same flat anyway, which is good, because we can chat, when we go to bed we can chat, on our landlines.

Ryan: I do all sorts. On Tuesday I mainly do golf, or the odd time I go bowling. I'm quite good at bowling, but the odd time the ball goes right in the centre, and just goes right in the end to the left or the right and I don't it a thing, which is very frustrating. So that's quite good, and then this Saturday I'm going to Leicester to play football with visually impaired people.

Tony: There are evening activities, weekend activities, and these are activities that are fun, but they're also learning activities as well, where people can develop their cooking skills, ability to clean their rooms, sports, other interests and activities. So it's a much more intensive programme than most people would get. 

Tony: When somebody first comes, we say to them "look, I know we're quite close to the centre of Loughborough, and Loughborough's an interesting place, but we don't want you to go out on your own yet, until we've assessed your mobility to make sure that you can do that, because we wouldn't want to spoil your experience here by something going wrong." But the more we get to know the learners, and the more experience they have of being here, and the more we show people routes and different things, then the more we would encourage people to do, to look after themselves, whether it's go out on their own socially, or do things like cooking, washing clothes, ironing, cleaning the room, and so on. We don't expect people to necessarily be able to do that at the beginning, but it's important that we get there as soon as possible.

Student: If you like, focus on what you want to do, and if you like, can't do do it in your home area, just come to the RNIB because they will help you out.

Tony: It's a very friendly place, everybody gets to know everybody else very quickly. It's the spirit of the college, it's the way it's run. Staff and students eat together, meet together on an informal basis all the while. There isn't that separation, and as a result we can overcome certainly problems like bullying, which is pretty-well non-existant here and something we are on top of.

Tony [voiceover]: If you think that this might be for you, come on one of our visit days and have a look around for yourself, because that's going to be the best guide as to whether this is what you want. The visits are under no obligation, you don't have to apply to come here after you've been here. We recognise it's an important decision, but that's by far the best way, even watching this DVD or reading one of our prospectuses or something like that is not going to be equivalent to the feel of actually looking around the college.