This morning was overcast and the weather app warned us of storms to come. We started the day at by taking a bus to Joseph Chamberlain College. JCC is what is called a sixth form college, which is more like the last two years of high school in the US and is not a university. While sixth form colleges are mainly students 16 to 18, nearly a third of JCC’s student population are adult learners. These adult learners are attending JCC to learn English for the first time and either prepare for employment or further education.

During our visit to JCC, we were brought into these ELL classes in small groups. The first classroom we went into was a mathematics class with about ten students. The teacher gave us a copy of the packet the students were working on and we found that they were learning algebra and geometry. The packet was a practice test and was formatted in a way similar to standardized math tests in the US. The students were going over this packet because tomorrow morning, they have their GCSE exam in mathematics. GCSE stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education and is key for employment or access to higher education in the UK. After visiting the mathematics class, we went across the street to visit a different class. This class was a slightly larger group, about 15 students, and they were learning early English. In this room the students had personal binders where they kept sheets with language rules and old worksheets. When we arrived in the classroom, the students were finishing up an assignment where they read a short passage and then corrected statements about the passage on a worksheet. Once they completed the assignment, the instructor went over a few common mistakes in the class and then put on a video explaining the conjugations of essential English verbs (have, do, and go). The video used both visuals and simple sentences to demonstrate the verb conjugations. After the video, the instructor then passed out gameboards that helped the students practice verb conjugations in the form of a game.

After an hour of classroom observations, we returned to the main building and met a member of JCC’s leadership, Tom Williams. He gave us a tour of the building and we found that, similar to BCU, the building was very open and had a lot of natural light. Additionally, there was a central courtyard with a pond and spaces called “Breakout Rooms” where students could study and find staff to help them with anything they may be having trouble with. During the tour, Tom gave us a bit of a better picture of the students at JCC. He told us that about 98% of the student population is Muslim and the students come from diverse language and ethnic backgrounds. Many of JCC’s students are also from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. However, 99.2% of students who take the A-Levels pass. This puts JCC in the top 15% of sixth form colleges in the country, on par with colleges with greatly advantaged students. This is just one of many things that shows JCC is very good at lifting their students up and improving their opportunities.

Tom’s tour concluded at an empty classroom where a teacher from the school received us and taught us a bit more about the adult learner’s population at JCC. She told us that their adult students are mainly immigrants who speak little to no English and want to learn in order to improve their quality of life in England and get better employment opportunities. However, many of these students have little to no income and therefore need a lot of financial aid. From what we learned, JCC goes above and beyond to financially accommodate their adult students. For example, if a student makes under £30k a year, the school will provide free education, pay for childcare if the student has a child under 2 years old, and pay for bus passes so students can commute to class. JCC also goes beyond financial support for their students. To make it easier for students to attend, class schedules accommodate childcare schedules as classes are 9:15-3pm. After our experience at JCC, it was clear that they prioritize educating, supporting, and protecting their students.

At noon, we returned to BCU’s South Campus for lunch and a lecture on Learning Disability Nursing in the UK. For lunch, I had a very British cheese and butter sandwich that was cut into triangles. The Learning Disability Nursing lecture began with defining learning disabilities. Learning disabilities are defined as a reduced ability to understand complex information or to learn new skills, often leading to a reduced ability to cope independently both practically and socially. Additionally, a learning disability must arise before the age of 18. Learning disabilities can have a variety of causes such as genetics, child abuse, injury, and more. In the UK, 1.5 million adults and children have a learning disability. People with learning disabilities were once sent to asylums away from society where they became institutionalized and their conditions often worsened. Today, asylum care has been largely dismantled in the UK and is instead replaced with small units within communities that manage around 4 patients. A big part of a learning disability nurse’s job is behavior assessment. This means that they focus on identifying the source of a behavior and fixing the source rather than just trying to stop the behavior. This shift in care has improved the quality of life for people with learning disabilities in the UK. However, the move from large asylums to small care units increases the need for learning disability nurses but the number of students becoming learning disability nurses remains low.