Ever since she was little, Noa Wigdortz has wanted to be a teacher.

Which is hardly surprising as her father is American-born educational entrepreneur Brett Wigdortz. In 2002 he founded the charity Teach First in the UK, which recruits teachers for schools in low-income areas — an initiative emulated in many other countries.

Noa’s pedagogic instinct began early at the age of six, when the family spent a few months in Israel while Mr Wigdortz was helping to set up Teach First there. “While I went to school there, I taught English to my friends during break and lunchtimes,” she recalled.

Now aged 12 and a year-seven student at JCoSS in London, she has already begun to think about how to make education better. Earlier this year she spent a week in India at the Kids Education Revolution conference in Mumbai.

Education is usually governed by a top-down approach where children are meant to imbibe what adults think good for them. But KER, according to its website, is “driven by a profound belief in the power of student leadership” and feels pupils should be consulted about the education they receive.

Noa was invited by Teach First India after she happened to accompany her father to an international education conference in Israel last year and was asked to give an impromptu talk on what she felt makes a good teacher.

Noa was one of three overseas participants among 101 boys and girls aged from eight to 18 who took part in an immersive three-day retreat, which was followed by a two-day summit involving 450 educators. It was about “listening to the student voice and incorporating it in everyday school life,” she said.

More than threequarters of schoolchildren in India do not go on to college, KER, says, and of those that do, only a fraction attain the "holistic education" that will enable them to maximise their potential - hence the need  "to redefine the purpose of education so that we unleash the fullest capability of each individual". 

In one exercise, the conference participants had to go out into the community and ask people in the street about their educational experiences. While her two Hindi-speaking companions in her group conducted interviews, she said, “Even not knowing the language, you could see from people’s facial expressions how interested they were in the cause.

“The most common problem we found is people having to drop out because they have to work for their poorer families.” 

Asked to come up with solutions, the students suggested recording lessons on webcam and enabling young people unable to attend school because they had to go out to work to come and watch in their own time.

For the summit, she led two sessions on the theme of the “upside-down school. It was about telling the educators how to introduce student voices into their classroom, how to get it so the school revolves around the students rather than what their government says they have to do.”

Given the flurry of directives that pour out of the Department for Education here and the demands of ever-tougher testing, the message of KER seems a long way from home.

But Noa says she and her friends are talking more about what they want  from education — and what might change.