A child who starts in our preschool at four leaves this school at eighteen, and the whole of that is one staff room with one set of records.
That means a grade nine teacher can read what the preschool teacher wrote about the same child, that nobody is ever handed over to a school that knows nothing about them, and that a difficulty found at five is still being worked on at fifteen by people who remember what was tried.
It matters most for the eleven children in the inclusive learning unit. A plan written for a six year old is reviewed every term by adults who have known them for years, and the change from primary to secondary, which is where most arrangements for a child like this quietly collapse, happens inside one building with the same people.
The cost of being all through is that we are small in the senior grades. Two combinations at grades eleven and twelve, not four, and a family who wants a third has to look at a larger school elsewhere. We say that in grade ten rather than in grade eleven.