Thirty eight years, and four times the size it was built for

Ufaa School opened in 1987 for about four hundred children. It now has one thousand six hundred and forty in the same building on two sessions.

The risk in a school this size is not teaching. It is that a child stops being known. In a school of ninety children every adult knows every child; here, a quiet child who hands work in and says nothing can go two years without a single adult noticing anything about them. That is the failure this school is organised against, and everything below is aimed at it.

Six houses. Every child belongs to one of six, about two hundred and seventy children each, with a head of house who stays with them from grade one to grade ten. A family deals with the same head of house for a child's whole time here, which is the one piece of continuity a school this size can genuinely offer.

Form teachers. Every class has one, sees them at the start of every session, holds the file and makes the telephone calls. Subject teachers report to the form teacher in writing every fortnight about anybody they are concerned about, and the form teacher contacts the family in the same week.

The absence call. Every unexplained absence in either session is telephoned before nine, or before two for the afternoon session. Four staff do nothing else for that hour. This is the single most useful thing this school does and it is described on the work page.

The student support team. Three counsellors and two support teachers, for sixteen hundred children, which is not enough and is more than most schools this size have.

What we cannot offer is the thing small schools do best. Nobody here will know your child the way a teacher in a school of ninety does. We know that, we say it at every admission meeting, and the arrangements above exist because we know it rather than instead of admitting it.