Scotland's looked after children: best educated in class, or do they need a 'hole in the wall'?

Abstract

How can looked after children with special educational needs be supported outside the school day? Research suggests a significantly high proportion of looked after children have special educational needs. This piece briefly explores my own educational experiences in the 1950s and '60s with reference to my recent discovery of the apparent benefits of peer supported, 'unsupervised' learning in the 'hole in the wall' experiment in the slums of Kalkaji, New Delhi, initiated by Sugata Mitra, Chief Scientist at NIIT, in 1982.

Keywords

• looked after children
• special education needs
• new delhi