The Granny Cloud was born. This is a group of grandmothers all over the UK who log on once a week to Skype with youngsters in India, and take on that appraising role that all grannies do so well, to tell stories, to stimulate fresh ideas and new ways of looking at the same old things. Mitra hopes to see a 25% increase in attainment thanks to this coaching/feedback mechanism.

This type of ‘learning from the extremes’ is working in schools in the UK now, too. By splitting up into groups of four, children answer ‘impossible’ questions simply through going to find out. For example, “Where does language come from?”. In the video above you can see how the answers reached – without the aid of a teacher – are just as ‘correct’ as those that might have been ‘delivered’ by a teacher, but reached through some other mechanic, something other than the way we’ve traditionally thought children learn. It also throws into question the assumption that we always need a specialist teacher in front of kids in order that they learn.