THE DIAMOND DEMOLITION Company is in action. A 'security video' is on, allowing its members to observe what is going on in their headquarters in London while they are busy with their commission to demolish a 19th century cotton mill in Manchester.
Children mime various scenarios - as cleaners and night guards, for example. Others watching will give oral and written reports to groups who had chosen not to see this 'screening'. Some are busy with other work, such as writing a report on the history of the mill.
Such drama usually happens once a day, but the rest of the time these Year Ones and Twos are still in role, working on their Diamond Demolition commission, and they have been doing so for nearly a whole term.
Gabriel, six, is writing pages on the conditions in the mill. 'Children age six worked there. They used to rub cotton to make it thin,' he said, demonstrating how cotton was prepared for spinning.
Diamond Demolition is just one 'company' in operation at Bealings School, a small village primary in the British county of Suffolk. Traditional lessons have been replaced so successfully by such enterprise that the school has caught national and international attention.
Bealings has around 100 students and about a decade ago it took appeals to the House of Commons to keep it open. Today, its future is secure, hailed as a model by Britain's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the National College for School Leadership.