Twenty two children in one room, taught in two groups for the core subjects and together for the rest.
These are the years we watch hardest. A child who has not become a fluent reader by the end of grade two begins here to look like a child who is poor at mathematics, or science, or who is not trying. Nearly always they are a child who cannot read the question. We check reading again at the start of grade three for exactly that reason, and any child below the level gets fifteen minutes of one to one every day from whichever adult is free.
What is taught: Dhivehi, English, mathematics, environmental studies, Islam, and the practical, art and physical periods. English is where the shared teacher arrangement matters most, and this class has two of its four English periods a week over the video link with two other schools.
Written work begins to be marked properly rather than ticked, and the first full term examinations are in grade four. A timetable goes up two weeks before and the report at the end of term is a page of sentences rather than a column of marks, because a number tells a parent nothing about what to do next.
Homework is three nights a week and short. Twenty minutes is right at this age, and a child taking an hour and a half is telling you something worth telling us at the gate.