Monday, June 30, 2008

16-year-old is headmaster of Indian School

For his classmates the four o’clock bell means lessons are over, but for 16-year-old Babur Ali it is time to take off his uniform and start a new school day as probably the youngest headmaster in the world.

Since he was 11 Babur has been running his own school in Bhabta, a small village outside Murshidabad, West Bengal, passing on to the children of poor families the knowledge he has acquired at his fee-paying school during the day.

It began when children in his village of jute farmers plagued him with questions about what he learnt at the 1,000-rupee-a-year (£12) school their parents could not afford.

Five years later he is acknowledged by district education officials as “headmaster” of the Anand Shikshya Niketan school, with 10 volunteer teachers and 650 pupils desperate to learn.

Babur’s hours would make British teachers wince. He rises at 5am for morning prayers, does household chores, then takes a bus to school in a village three miles away. From 10am to 4pm he focuses on his own education, then he races back to his village to welcome his students at 5pm.

He teaches the state school curriculum – English, Bengali language, history and maths – until 8pm and supervises his colleagues, mainly fellow pupils ranging from 16 to 19 years old. The schedule does not weary him: “I never feel tired – in fact [teaching] gives me more strength.”

Full story here.

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