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Homework is done at school, which features a library, internet and assisting teachers like dos Santos.

Students also work in vegetable gardens and learn about sustainably harvesting trees and working with wood. “The goal is to have students learn skills that they can take back to develop within their communities”, Garrido said. There are also computing and internet classes, with students required to maintain a “Passion for the Amazon” blog and upload digital photographs. Students boasted email and Facebook accounts. The school has support from FAS, along with a non-governmental organization devoted to keeping alive the stories and culture of Amazonian people.

“When I came to this school last year, we had 560 students. But now, there are more than 1,400,” says Mr. Hussein. “Most of the new arrivals are coming from rural communities, where they have been forced out by the drought. They have lost all their livestock, everything, and we cannot just turn them away.”

South Koreans are not alone in their discontent. Across Asia, reformers are pushing to make schools more "American" — even as some U.S. reformers render their own schools more "Asian." In China, universities have begun fashioning new entry tests to target students with talents beyond book learning. And Taiwanese officials recently announced that kids will no longer have to take high-stress exams to get into high school. If South Korea, the apogee of extreme education, gets its reforms right, it could be a model for other societies.

The problem is not that South Korean kids aren't learning enough or working hard enough; it's that they aren't working smart. When I visited some schools, I saw classrooms in which a third of the students slept while the teacher continued lecturing, seemingly unfazed. Gift stores sell special pillows that slip over your forearm to make desktop napping more comfortable. This way, goes the backward logic, you can sleep in class — and stay up late studying. By way of comparison, consider Finland, the only European country to routinely perform as well as South Korea on the test for 15-year-olds conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In Finland, public and private spending combined is less per pupil than in South Korea, and only 13% of Finnish students take remedial after-school lessons.

World literature will also have greater space in this curriculum.

Anjali Chhabra, education officer at the CBSE in New Delhi told India Real Time that subjects will be taught with a more global perspective. For instance, when it comes to history there will be more space for world history, rather than just Indian history, as is the case in the regular curriculum.

Languages are an important component of the international curriculum. The students are also expected to study three languages, rather than just two. Compulsory languages are English and either Hindi or another local language, as is already the case in the regular curriculum, plus a foreign language. Options could include French, Russian, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

So far, only ten schools across India have applied for the international syllabus.

In a major leap for India’s education system the country’s Central Board of Secondary Education has decided to go international with a brand new curriculum.

But Chumki is now getting an education, thanks to Babar Ali. The 16-year-old has made it his mission to help Chumki and hundreds of other poor children in his village. The minute his lessons are over at Raj Govinda school, Babar Ali doesn't stop to play, he heads off to share what he's learnt with other children from his village. At four o'clock every afternoon after Babar Ali gets back to his family home a bell summons children to his house. They flood through the gate into the yard behind his house, where Babar Ali now acts as headmaster of his own, unofficial school.

Now his afternoon school has 800 students, all from poor families, all taught for free. Most of the girls come here after working, like Chumki, as domestic helps in the village, and the boys after they have finished their day's work labouring in the fields.

Including Babar Ali there are now 10 teachers at the school, all, like him are students at school or college, who give their time voluntarily. Babar Ali doesn't charge for anything, even books and food are given free, funded by donations. It means even the poorest can come here.

The school has been recognised by the local authorities, it has helped increase literacy rates in the area, and Babar Ali has won awards for his work.

In Wales, nearly 400 of approximately 1,880 schools have said they will be closed and around 440 partially closed, according to figures from local authorities.