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Children whose learning, movement, hearing, sight, speech or behaviour needs more than a class of twenty six can give. Eleven children have a written plan this year and about forty more get lighter support with no plan at all.

A family may ask, or a teacher may raise it. Either way the unit observes the child in class for a fortnight first, then meets the family, and a plan is written only if that is what is agreed. Nothing happens before the family has read it.

No, unless the plan says that is better for them for part of the day, and then they go to the unit rooms with an assistant and come back.

Every child with a plan is registered in an ordinary class, goes to its assembly and sits with it at lunch. Support comes into the room. We chose this rather than a separate unit deliberately: a separate unit is much easier to run and the children in it are not in the school in any way that matters to them.

What the child can do now, the next step, who does what and when, what the class teacher changes in the room, how progress will be judged, and the date of the next review. One page and a half, in plain sentences.

It is agreed with the family, reviewed every term with the family, and the family holds a copy. A plan nobody reads is a plan nobody follows, which is why it is short.

No, and this is the honest gap. There is no speech therapist, no occupational therapist and nobody qualified to diagnose a specific learning difficulty on this island, and the school will not offer a label it cannot give.

What we do is say what we are seeing, help you arrange an assessment in Male including the boat and the appointment, and then work from whatever it says. Four families have done this in three years and the school arranged all four.

Preschool and grade one admission runs through November, for children who turn four or six before the school year begins. Any other grade can be joined at any time of the year where there is a place.

Bring the birth record and the immunisation card, and the report or transfer paper from a previous school. There is no test of entry at any grade.

Before a child starts in the preschool or in grade one, their teacher comes to the house for about twenty minutes, meets the child somewhere the child is confident, and talks to the family about anything they want to say.

It costs each of those teachers about six afternoons a year and it is the best thing this school does. A child who has already met their teacher at their own table walks into the room differently on the first morning.