At a school in West Yorkshire, a group of children are reading about another kind of school, on a rooftop in Patna, India. It’s the story of Munni, who has to stay home and help her family, even though she wants to go to school. When she gets her wish, she’s so thrilled to finally be able to learn how to read that she wants to give the people around her the same chance. So she starts her own school – on, of all places, a nearby rooftop – and starts teaching women and girls from across her community to read too.
“We didn’t tell the children that it was based on a real story until we got to the end,” says Caroline Watkiss, head of the Co-op academy in Beckfield. “Their faces light up when they realise Munni’s a real person, a child just like them. They were absolutely outraged that she wasn’t allowed to go to school. They felt it was very unjust.”
