1. Mr White, head of school improvement Mrs Smith, campaigner EFAP Babar Ali, what an amazing young man. When he was nine he started a school in his village for a few children. Now there are over 800 students! I am the only one in my village who is able to go to school. I love learning and want to share what I find out with the other children in my neighbourhood. Mr Ali, head teacher – and only 16 years old! Would you want Babar Ali as the head teacher of your school? Head teacher at 16? Ridiculous !

2. Education – the way out of poverty? Chumki Hajra Every day I work in my village from 6am until 2:30pm, then I go to Babar Ali's school. At 7pm every evening I go back to work for a couple of hours. I earn 200 rupees a month. I want to become a nurse, and Babar Ali's classes might make it possible. Do we take school for granted? Around the world, millions of children are not getting a proper education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school.

3. What do you have in your classroom that won’t be in Babar Ali’s? What do you think it would be like to go to school here? Classrooms, how different can they be?

4. Where is Babar Ali’s school? Where is your school? Rp 75.5 = £1 1 euro = 90p 1 US dollar = 60p Basmati rice: ● £1.30 kg ● Rp 70 ● $1.41 ● 1.11 euros

5. Up2d8 maths Teacher’s guide In October, a story came into the news about a remarkable boy- man named Babar Ali, who ceases to amaze none, with his mission of education and educating. The teenager from Murshidabad, West Bengal has lived his life in extreme poverty. But so great was his desire to study and go to school that fighting all odds the boy attended classes regularly in a school, miles away from home. … continued on the next slide

6. His day starts early morning, when he helps with household chores and then he goes to school travelling on an auto rickshaw for the first 10 km, from where he has to walk the remaining kilometres. When he gets home at 4pm he rings the bell to tell all the children in his area that his school is about to begin. His school began with a few children and now has over 800 plus 10 other staff. Before you use this spread, get to know his story and where he comes from. You might find these websites helpful: educationmaster.org www.whatsonxiamen.com en.wikipedia.org

7. 1 st spread: Mr Ali, head teacher – and only 16 years old! ● Tell the story of Babar Ali and ask the children what they think about it. Why do they think he thinks education is so important? Do they have the same views, or do we tend to take our schooling for granted. ● Discuss what Babar might teach. Which subjects do the children think would be most important? Why? ● Do they think he would make a good head teacher? Why / why not? You may need to encourage them to focus on his passion for education and its importance for children in order for them to get out of the poverty trap that they are in and the fact that without him the children wouldn’t get a chance at any schooling. ● Who do they agree with – Mrs Smith or Mr White? Why? ● Make a tally of the children’s favourite subjects in school. You could then ask them to represent the information as a pictogram, bar chart or pie chart, depending on their ages. ● Ask the children how they like to spend their time after school and compare with Babar. Make a list of activities on the board with a tally to indicate who does what, eg. football, swimming, dancing, music lessons, watching TV. Does teaching their friends and family come in the list? ● Can they imagine what it must be like not to be able to go to school because they are too poor and have to work? Tell them that, like the government-run schools in this country, those in West Bengal are free but that Babar has to pay for his uniform, books and travelling expenses which cost around Rp1800 per year, which is a lot for his parents to afford. ● Discuss the long term effects on their lives of not going to school, eg. no qualifications, unemployment, wages.

8. 1 st spread: Mr Ali, head teacher – and only 16 years old! continued… ● FS children could examine their school clothes – differences and similarities, counting jumpers, trousers etc. worn by their classmates. ● Discuss currency - rupees (Rp) in India and work out roughly how much Rp1800 is in sterling. Use an exchange rate of Rp1: 1p for younger children or more accurately Rp75.5: £1 for older ones. Alternatively, you could check out today’s exact rate on the internet. You could ask them to work out the cost using the grid method for multiplication, grouping, mental strategies, written method or a calculator, eg. Rp755: £10, Rp1510: £20, Rp375: £5, so Rp1895: £25. It would cost Babar’s family just under £25 per year to send him to school. ● Ask them if they think £25 is a lot of money. What they might spend that amount on? Make a list of their ideas. ● For KS1 you could make a shop with some toys priced and labelled in rupees in multiples of 10 or in Year 2 five, give the children a budget, eg. Rp100 and ask them to find items they could buy within their budget. Encourage counting in 10s or 5s to find their totals. ● Find out how much pocket money the children get a week and how long it would take them to save up the equivalent amount of money that Babar’s parents need to pay for his schooling. ● Tell them that an average daily wage for someone from Babar’s town could be as little as Rp51. How much is that in our money: Rp7.5:10p, so Rp51 is just over 70p! Discuss what you could buy in the UK for 70p – not a lot! Work out, using a calculator, mental or written methods, how many days’ wages would cover Babar’s school requirements of about £25. ● Imagine that this wage was paid for 50 weeks out of the year. How much would that be? How much would be left for Babar’s family after the £25 for his school needs is taken away? You could ask them to use a calculator to work how much that would leave them for daily living expenses, eg. food.

9. 2 nd spread: Education – the way out of poverty? ●Discuss the fact that millions of children can’t go to school asking the children to tell you in which countries this would happen and the countries where children do go to school. Locate some of these countries on a map. ●Focus on Chumki Hajra’s day. Ask the children to make a timetable to show what she does and compare it to their average day. They could make up a timetable for theirs too. Use this as an opportunity to focus on analogue and digital time. Find out how long Chumki and the children spend doing the things they do, eg. for how many hours does she work, how many hours do they spend at school? Do the children do chores at home? ●Look at her wages for a month’s work and work out how much that would be in sterling – about 25p. Ask them to work out how much that would be per day if she worked five days a week. Link this into a session on ratio. Compare this with a paper round that a 14-year-old might do at £3 a day, taking two hours each day. ●Discuss why Chumki considers Babar’s school so important. How might it help her become a nurse? Discuss other jobs she or her friends might be able to do if they carry on studying at Babar’s school.

10. 3 rd spread: Classrooms – how different can they be? ●Ask the children to compare the two classrooms illustrated. What things do they have available that the other classroom doesn’t, eg. whiteboards, computers. ●Make a list of around 10 things in your classroom that would not be in the other using a tally to indicate how many there are of each. Ask the children to represent this as a pictogram or bar chart. ●Ask younger children to count pencils, rubbers etc. that they have available. ●In the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, set up two boxes, one labelled with Our Class, the other with Babar Ali’s school. At the end of each session, add one of everything used to the box (where practical, or add to a list). During the last session of the day, look at what is in the class box. Use the PowerPoint pictures to help to decide which items would also be found in Babar Ali’s school. Compare the contents of the two boxes. ●Set up a simple school like Babar’s. Use benches and a blackboard outdoors to create a similar effect. Ask the children to think about what it would be like to have such limited resources every single day. In FS use small world play equipment to set up a school. ●Give the children the cost of tables and chairs or ask them to research this on the internet and then work out how much it would cost to buy enough for your classroom. ●Alternatively, you could ask them to find out how much it costs to equip your classroom? Allocate different classroom equipment to groups of children to research and cost. Total and convert to rupees. How many years wages would be needed to buy the equipment? ●They could design a classroom. Give them a budget and a school equipment catalogue to do this.

11. 4 th spread: Where is Babar Ali’s school? ●Display a map of the world and locate West Bengal and where your school is. Using the scale, work out roughly how far away Babar’s school is. You could use this as an opportunity to convert kilometres to miles. ●Ask them to plan a trip to West Bengal, finding out costs of travel and accommodation from the internet. ●Compare the average cost of a packet of rice in the UK and in India. You could also compare with dollars and euros. In which country is 1 kg more expensive? ●Encourage the children to weigh 1 kg of small items so that they get the feel for this weight. ●For younger children, you could show them a packet of rice and ask them to find things that would be equivalent, using balance scales to estimate first. ●You could extend this by developing an investigation to find out how many people 1 kg of rice will feed. How long will it last a family of four? Children could design and carry out their own tests. ●Ask them to make up a currency table for one, two, four, five, 10, 15, 20 etc. pounds and their equivalences to rupees, US dollars and euros. Use this as an opportunity to rehearse the mental calculation skills involved in finding two and four by doubling, five by halving 10, 20 by doubling 10, 15 by adding 10 and half of 10 etc.