Young Tony bounces the basketball rhythmically on the wooden floor of the gym as he moves easily up the wing. “Stop showing off,” someone shouts and he passes it to Shaun, who takes a shot that just misses. A long pass out of defence is caught neatly by Nicki, who turns and shoots without hesitation, the ball bouncing off the backboard and smacking young Graham on the side of the head. Unabashed he picks up the ball and sends it soaring high in the air to drop cleanly through the hoop.

It sounds like an ordinary game of basketball in a school gym, but it isn’t. This is the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh and most of these children can barely see the ball, never mind the baskets. So how do they play the sport?

“With a bit of practice it’s not too difficult,” explains Anne Marie Fleming, one of three physical education teachers at the school. “We teach them always to use the bounce pass so the receiver can hear it coming. And we attach little electronic devices that make a beeping sound to the baskets so they know where they are.”

The children are taught the basic skills of passing, catching, shooting and dribbling and when every player is blind or partially sighted the game adjusts to suit them. It slows down, becomes more thoughtful, less frenetic, in theory at least. In practice, enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of these children and they have to be reminded that shoulder charges are frowned upon by basketball purists.

The variety of sports played by pupils at the school, who range in age from three to 19, is surprising: swimming, athletics, trampolining, canoeing, sailing, skiing, hill walking, rock climbing - “a tactile sport the kids are often very good at” - table tennis and football are some.

While children at the school are exposed to a great deal of sport, the same cannot be said for partially sighted pupils in mainstream schools. Scotland has almost 1,000 registered blind or partially sighted schoolchildren, many of them taught in mainstream schools. Last summer, the National Schools Athletics Championships for the Visually Impaired were held in Scotland, rather than England. Besides 18 Royal Blind School athletes, only four children from Scottish schools competed. It was a disappointing turnout and an indication of how little is done with visually impaired children in mainstream schools.

There is no doubt that a game of football or basketball in which just one blind or partially sighted child took part would be very different from a game with either all visually impaired participants or two fully sighted teams. Adjustments would have to be made, not just by the teacher but by all the children in the game.

“But isn’t that what social inclusion is about?” asks Wilma Henderson, another of the physical education teachers at the Royal Blind School. “You may think of sports as very competitive - win at all costs but the game itself changes when a blind person takes part. It becomes more about people helping each other, and that’s an important thing for all children to learn. They start to think: ‘This person is in our class and performs at this level, so we’ll work around that and with them’,” she says.

Encouraging visually impaired children to play sports does not demand a lot of expensive equipment, say staff at the Royal Blind School, many of whom have worked in mainstream schools. What it does take is a willingness to try, the realisation that good health and fitness are important for all, and a lot more information provided to teachers - during initial training or in-service courses - on what can be done.

One of the most effective ways of delivering this information, says Ms Fleming, is by teachers working with visually impaired children, even for a short time.

“One year we had groups of student PE teachers here from Moray House. At first most of them were not frightened exactly, but very unsure around the children. They didn’t know what to do with them or how to communicate with them.

“We got them working with the children, doing swimming and athletics - two of the best sports for visually impaired kids.

“Even just being here for a morning they learned so much. They quickly discovered that these are normal kids with the same interests as any others and that it’s easy to talk to them. The students got a lot out of the project and so did we.

“Unfortunately it was just a one-off but it shows what can be done.”

One scheme in particular can make a huge difference to visually impaired children in mainstream schools, say the teachers, and that is providing them with a sighted child as a buddy. Buddies can help visually impaired youngsters in all sorts of ways: by practising skills with them, by preparing a fitness programme and helping them to follow it, by accompanying them when they run around an athletics track and by taking part with them in a team game, telling them where to move and how to position themselves.

“One of the things I’d really like to see,” says Ms Henderson, “is senior pupils getting credit at Higher or Advanced Higher for doing a unit of buddying or coaching a disabled child in their school.

“I’d also be very interested to hear from mainstream PE colleagues about any schemes they have developed to help visually impaired children in their classes. Sharing good practice would be useful to all of us.”

The Royal Blind School, Craigmillar Park, Edinburgh EH16 5NA, tel 0131 667 1100e-mail office@royalblindschool.org.uk