New Delhi, Aug. 6 -- It would be inaccurate to call the three rooms in this school 'classrooms.' In most primary schools, dedicated rooms are assigned to classes-Class 1 to Class 5-or shared if there aren't enough; and so they are called classrooms.

Here, however, the rooms are designated by subject. Perhaps they should be called 'subject rooms.'

Unlike in other schools, when a class period ends here, students move but the teachers stay. The system is not unheard of. It exists in some countries as standard practice and in a few elite Indian schools.

But to find it in a government primary school, tucked away in what we might call a 'remote' area, is astonishing. How did this happen?

The head-teacher has been with the school since it op...