26 October to 2nd November

Hunger to Learn: Hunger to share

Babar Ali, age 16, lives in West Bengal. He spends his days in full time education. When his own studies are over, he runs a school for poor children in the yards and sheds around his home. The school has grown since he began sharing what he was learning, with less fortunate children, seven years ago. Babar is the headteacher, and with nine other teachers, all of whom, like him, are still full time students, he provides education for 800 pupils. Babar's parents can afford to pay for the books, uniform and rickshaw ride he needs in order to attend school; his pupils' parents cannot and so depend on Babar and his friends.

In the UK primary and secondary education are provided free, and so there is no need for schools like Babar's or for teenage head teachers here. Responses to BBC reports about his school demonstrate how unusual his commitment to sharing knowledge seems to us. It is rooted in a love of education and an unusual understanding of the importance, for his pupils, of learning to read and write: 'It's my duty to educate them.' Babar's dedication challenges us to reassess our attitudes to learning and to teaching.

Susan Fairbairn is a PhD student in Arts and Society, researching the identities of Pakistani women living in the UK. For many years she was a teacher with Manchester's Ethnic Minority Achievement Service, and before that she was a researcher at Manchester University for ten years.