Last October, Bosworth Independent College students had the opportunity to speak live to a student and teacher from a school for the blind in Tanzania. The teacher was an ex student of the school and was also blind.

The school was set up approximately 10 years ago and is a salvation for the blind students who are chosen as before they would have been in classes of over 100 children in a normal school, which obviously limited their ability to learn.

The link up was part of the BBC ‘Hunger to Learn’ series and Bosworth Independent College was chosen because of its international student mix.

Five Bosworth students got the opportunity to take part throughout the day and we were on two channels BBC world and BBC news channel. Students were sat in front of a web cam, watching themselves as well as the student and teacher in Tanzania on the screen.

Through the headset the BBC gallery staff instructed the students how long they had before going live to the link up. Once live, the students on average got to ask about 4 questions each.

The Tanzanian student understood some of our questions and we did manage to find out his favourite football team was Everton! The teacher was able to explain to us in more detail what life is like in Tanzania, what the school day consisted of and why he had chosen to go into teaching.

It was a fascinating insight for Bosworth students to take part in the live link up and to get to understand how little some schools have in the way of facilities. It was a humbling experience for all involved and definitely made the students recognise how lucky they are to receive a good education.


Time Slots
10.30 BBC world – Anastasia Venetska (Ukraine)
10.40 BBC news channel – Radek Freyer (Polish)
11.30 BBC news channel – Chak Sum Leung (Chinese)
14.30 BBC world – Sam Flowers (British)
14.40 BBC news channel – Harpreet Kaur (British)

The BBC news live link-up with Harpreet is available to view on the BBC website.

Tags: news