Fridas Hage Primary School
Fridas Hage Primary School, Sweden, is set in a small village called Höviksnäs, on an island called Tjorn. Tjorn is Sweden’s 7th largest island and is located on the west coast of Sweden, about fifty kilometres north of Gothenburg. We are connected to the mainland by a bridge. Tjorn has about 15000 inhabitants, but in summertime there are about 45 000 people on the island, due to a lot of summer guests. Our school has about 200 pupils (age 6-12), in 11 groups altogether at the moment. We have a group for children with special needs, they have disabilities like Down’s syndrome, autism etc. They have their own classrooms and teachers, but they are also taking part of joint activities like assemblies, music, theme weeks etc. A few children with special needs are sometimes integrated in regular classes, with adult support. Other pupils with elementary learning difficulties are always integrated in regular classes, some of them with adult support. Most of our children are from Swedish speaking homes, but we also have children from other cultures, approximately 20%. English is introduced to all pupils from grade 2 and the involvement in projects like this is also important for making the understanding of English and other languages and cultures more vivid.