As one of the largest providers of adult education in the UK we take the health and well-being of our learners very seriously.

A large number of the adults on our courses are learning English as a second language or have low levels of literacy. During the COVID-19 pandemic we have wanted to make sure that our learners were able to access trustworthy and clear information, be able to get support and make informed decisions for their own health and wellbeing and also that of their families.

Janet Culley-Tucker explains more about the COVID-19 vaccine project.
"I am an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher and I really wanted to give my class some information about the Coronavirus vaccine. I found some videos in different languages but they didn't include all the languages spoken in my class and the content was challenging for learners to understand. One solution was to make our own videos with the help of a medical professional, Dr Ali Akbar, using clear and accessible language.

We hope that these videos will challenge misinformation and provide reassurance for people about the benefits of having the vaccine. We also hope that learners will share these positive messages with other people.

by Janet Culley-Tucker, BAES Teacher

Four ESOL teachers volunteered to be recorded asking Dr Akbar the kinds of questions that learners ask them in class. Although the vaccination topic is complicated, we wanted to make videos which would focus on the main points of the health messages using graded English which would be easier for learners to understand.

The videos are for using in class with the help of teachers and also for learners to discuss with their friends and families. As the project continued it became clear that people were receiving lots of misleading information from fake news messages and this was often frightening and confusing. In order to answer learners' specific questions we decided to produce 11 separate short videos and one 2 minute information video which summarises lots of points.

It's really great that all the videos are now available on our Community Hub along with other vaccine information in English and in other languages. We hope that these videos will challenge misinformation and provide reassurance for people about the benefits of having the vaccine. We also hope that learners will share these positive messages with other people."

The BAES Community Hub is available to everyone. You can access it here https://www.learnbaes.ac.uk/community-hub

(You will need to log on as a GUEST, the details are - Username: BAESGuest, Password: CommHub - then click the COVID-19 tile.)