The Daily Echo gives The Cedar Special School, in Nursling, the chance to showcase its activities. By head teacher Brian Hart

THE Cedar School is a special school maintained by Southampton City Council for day pupils aged from two to 16 plus. However, pupils come from a wider catchment area than the city and may come from as far afield as Salisbury, Andover, Winchester and Eastleigh.

The school is purpose-built for children with physical difficulties with needs of varying levels of complexity and severity.

The main aim of the school is to encourage all the children to grow up into independent, happy, well balanced, self-respecting and caring adults who can make a positive contribution to society.

To make the most of each pupil's strengths and abilities an inter-disciplinary team of people - teachers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, nurses, parents and learning support assistants - formulate an individual education plan for each child. This is regularly reviewed and updated with the parents and the child as he or she gets older.

The school offers the national curriculum and a very wide range of examination courses, including GCSE, tailored specifically to each child's ability. The development of physical and independence skills is at the centre of all the work we do. A very wide range of extra curricular activities is offered, including performing arts, sport and leisure pursuits. We also have a flourishing Branch Out youth club and youth theatre, which also welcomes able-bodied children.

Over the years some of our pupils have achieved incredible success at national level. Our students have won a top award at the National Student Drama Festival, many gold medals at the National Athletics Championships and they have been several time winners of the National Wheelchair Dance Competition. Several are also gold award winners in the British Association of Young Scientists scheme.

To give the children a wider education the school maintains four specially adapted minibuses which are vital to transport the pupils on visits to all sorts of interesting places. In addition, we arrange residential visits to activity centres which are not only fun, but also physically challenging and a great way to gain independence and confidence. It can also be an introduction to lifelong hobbies.

The school has a very supportive governing body and a flourishing parent staff association which not only raises essential money for the school, maintains the minibuses, but also organises parent coffee mornings to which speakers are invited to talk on a wide range of relevant topics.

Links have been established with neighbouring schools and we organise an outreach service to help pupils with physical difficulties who are within mainstream schools. The school enjoys great support from individuals and organisations from the wider community. We really appreciate the time, effort and commitment given to us by so many people.

At Cedar School our central ethos is on providing a system of education in which we are all operating as a team and not in direct competition with each other. This successful way of working was recognised in our recent glowing Ofsted report.

We are also constantly trying to improve the system which can only be achieved when there is an atmosphere of trust, in which everyone feels not only confident enough to share ideas and express opinions, but is also equally prepared to listen to and consider and implement the ideas of others. This approach is encouraged by the Investors in People award which the school has held for many years.