Yesterday, a now deleted user posted to r/blind about college, specifically asking about provision at mainstream versus specialist in the UK.

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I can't remember all her questions, but the post has been deleted, yet I think it's a topic worth addressing if she's still here. So here's

\##my initial reply

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There is no \*right\* answer to this, of course, everything is hugely dependent on your circumstances, personality, and many other things. My take:

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I thrived in mainstream education. When I left, if you'd told me there were specialist places just because I couldn't see, I'd have laughed at you. I was gifted academically and, if not quite a social butterfly, I got bye.

however, having now spoken to more VI people than I knew existed as a teen, I can see the benefits. Placement in specialist education will help with more than your course, which will be deliverable by a qualified teacher in any event, but a qualified teacher of the visually-impaired at specialist. You'll also have opportunities to improve your access technology, mobility, living skills and Braille if you might eventually need it, and being brutally honest, access to that sort of training as an adult is a massive postcode lottery. As an adult, training for this sort of thing falls under the rehab umbrella, and the majority of those trainers are underpaid, overworked, and their client base tends to be older people losing their eyesight through diabetes, age and so on: in short, it's a bit like going to uni. The experience of being in VI education at a certain age is a gestalt, and your opportunities to have an "in" with a variegated group of other blind people socially will almost certainly not come again.

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Again, brutal honesty time. You've already had to leave mainstream once. The pace of education doesn't necessarily slow as you get older, so if learning of any sort was a contributary factor, that's not going to go away.

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Yes, there are downsides to specialist education. people who've gone through the whole system (I'm talking from the ages of 3 to 5 years old for the most part, but sometimes from 11) do sometimes come across differently. Whenever I've met a group of people with a visual impairment in-person, or nowadays been on a Zoom or something with them, there's usually an ineffable socialism button missing from many of the long-term spec-ed people. You can spot it, or certainly you could, for those who went through the process some time ago. This is far less pronounced at college age, of course, people have either learned to integrate by this point or, if that has caused issues and it's a factor in their moving away from mainstream temporarily, they at least know what it could be to be included and have an idea of what efforts they need to extend in that direction.

Next, there's the issue of pace. If you're in a class of between 4 and 10 other VI people, you're much more likely to get your lecturer's attention than if you're in a big crowd of 30 to 50 at college. Yet, you sometimes still have to go at a slower pace because of the quality of the other learners. Inevitably this means, if you are gifted academically yourself, you'll need to put in more effort on your own if you don't just want to coast along with the group. Obviously if there are aspects of a course you'll struggle with, this provides a lot more wiggle room.

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On balance, I think I personally would lean toward specialist rather than away from it at sixth form, particularly if there are other life skills around your visual impairment that could do with a touch-up. can you cook a meal? Make a bed? Wash your clothes? Navigate on your own? browse the web and use apps efficiently with your technologies accessibility software? Do you have contingencies for your sight to get worse? The ability to link up with other VI people for advice and guidance in your future career and studies? These are the sort of things that spec-ed could equip you with - if you answered no to any of the above, one of the VI colleges might be your best option. That said, if you are already adept at all of that and you \*just\* want to do a course at college, there's a lot of spec-ed baggage to jump through. You may be able to get yourself on to a summer skills programme somewhere to catch up with these things or have a lucky dip on the adult social services ladder and find a reasonable provider somewhere in the UK.

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No right answer, but hopefully this rather long reply (sorry) has given you some food for thought.

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\##also

u/KillerLag asked some questions too, to which I responded:

The college scene outside the US doesn't do degrees, we call those universeties. :) the courses available to OP would be the same, or pretty much so, country-wide. Mainstream would mean that any help she'd get would be fitted around regular classes, usually with assistance from people outside the system on a peripatetic basis. The specialist colleges generally provide qualified subject teachers also versed in VI teaching, support staff who can teach O&M, access tech, Braille etc, but they are usually handled as a boarding school setup and students are effectively sequestered for the duration of their course commune-style.