A new special school for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is to offer speech and language therapy to students who struggle to communicate.

Gretton School in Cambridge will open in January 2010 and will cater for up to 40 young people between the ages of five and fifteen who suffer form autism or Apserger Syndrome.

Upon opening it will only operate as a day school, but over the following fourteen months it plans to expand its services. Gretton aims to incorporate residential education and activities to the school, and to add medical facilities and support staff.

Recruitment to fill the occupational therapy jobs and speech and language therapy jobs created by this development is expected to begin closer in January.

The school hopes to work with the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge in research programmes aimed at improving the standard of care and support available to young people with ASD.

Through these programmes, it intends to become a national provision to support teacher and medical training to teach and identify children with ASD.

One in 100 UK children are estimated to have ASD. The term covers a number of conditions, but common traits among all of them include problems with the ability to understand social behaviour or to understand and use non-verbal and verbal communication. Unlike their peers children with ASD can need close tutoring to gain even the basics of speech, and some of may never develop verbal speech.