Admission time is just round the corner and as a concerned parent, the importance of sending your child to the right school takes precedence. To make things easier for you, Aviva, along with Hindustan Times put together a survey that identifies the top 10 schools in your area within your city.

The survey was conducted by the prominent market survey agency ‘C fore’. The survey consisted of a healthy mix of parents and teachers that brings you a result that is fitting and unbiased.

The research was conducted in cities like Mumbai, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon & Faridabad. In order to help you check the top schools in these regions we have developed a Top School Survey Application on Facebook. You can select the region of your choice and see the survey conducted.

Click here to check the survey

New Delhi, July 9, 2010: Aviva Life insurance today announced the launch of the ‘Aviva Young Scholars’, one of the biggest scholarship contests for school students in Delhi and NCR. Students from around 300 schools from classes 3rd to 8th  will be participating in this contest. Through this contest, Aviva will award scholarships worth Rs 10 lakhs to more than 300 students.

Vishal Gupta, Director – Marketing, Aviva Life Insurance, India, said “At Aviva, we have a special focus on children and we continuously work towards securing their future, whether through our insurance products or opportunities to help them realize their true potential. We believe that education is the best form of insurance, and are pleased to launch ‘Aviva Young Scholars’, a great opportunity for young kids to win Aviva Scholarships.”

The written test in schools will start next week. iDiscoveri, a leading enterprise in the space of school education, enterprise leadership development and outdoor education, is the knowledge partner, and has prepared the written test papers. Students will be tested on questions related to numerical and linguistic ability, problem solving skills, lateral thinking, reasoning and more.

In addition to the scholarships from Aviva, iDiscoveri will give away Youreka Summer camps worth Rs 15000 to the top 21 students.

Here are the Terms & Conditions

Identical looks and mannerism, similar likes, dislikes, ailments, alike mood swings… twins have a lot in common, but identical percentage of marks in SSC? That makes an amazing twins story, and the Shah brothers from Mira Road have scripted it perfectly.

Parents, teachers, friends and relatives of Vinay and Vivek Shah gaped in amazement when the SSC exam results were declared a few days ago. The marksheets said Vinay Shah, 90.18 per cent, Vivek Shah, 90.18 per cent. The twins themselves are surprised. They are at a loss of words trying to explain the unique result.

Sixteen-year-olds Vinay and Vivek are students of St Xavier’s School in Mira Road. Despite spending years at the school, teachers still have trouble telling one from the other. Only their parents, Pinky and Sanjay Shah, are able to achieve that without any problem.

For the world, Vinay and Vivek may be of the same age, but among themselves, Vinay plays the ideal elder brother. After all, he came into this world 12 minutes before Vivek! Said Vivek, affection written all over his face, “My brother helped me a lot. We studied together but same percentage is yet to sink in. It has generated a great deal of curiosity among our family, friends and in the school too.”

The twins are not alike in everything, added their mother Pinky. “Vinay is a calm boy while Vivek has a sharp temper,” she said, “but both are very protective about each other.”

In the SSC exams, the brothers have a difference of barely a few marks in each subjects. For instance, Vivek scored 148 in maths, while Vinay, considered not so good at numbers, scored 144. Said Vinay, “In the class 10 prelims, I scored 83 per cent while Vivek had 85 per cent. We realised we will score more or less the same percentage in board exams, but never thought it would end up identical.”

Source: Mumbai Mirror

MUMBAI: The state government’s lackadaisical approach seems to have paved the way for private unaided schools to go ahead and hike school fees. The Bombay High Court on Tuesday continued its stay on a state government circular prohibiting schools from hiking fees till it is approved by a fee regulation committee.

With the state government missing the deadline set by the high court last year to come up with a school fee policy, the association of private unaided schools had moved the HC to seek directions that the government circular would be held in abeyance till a final decision is taken on the issue.

A division bench of acting chief Justice J N Patel and Justice S C Dharmadhikari admonished the state government for the delay. “You are playing with the future of lakhs of students,” remarked the court.

The government filed an undertaking in the high court that it would finalise its school fee policy before July 15. The state’s move to get private schools to fall in line with a new circular in March 2010 to regulate fees too failed. Following the association’s protestations that the circular was an attempt to bypass the December 2009 HC order, the state said it was withdrawing the circular.

The HC had last year directed the state to decide on the fee policy by February 2010. The deadline was further extended to May. The state said that it proposed to frame a policy and had appointed a committee headed by IAS officer Kumud Bansal. The committee had recommended full autonomy to private unaided schools to fix fees.

The committee had suggested that the issue of hike be discussed with the Parents Teachers Association, but schools be allowed to collect reasonable surplus, while prohibiting them from demanding capitation fees. The court asked the state to invite suggestions to the report from parents, experts and educational institutions before taking a final decision on its fee hike policy. The HC has scheduled hearing on the case on July 20.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Education experts are wondering whether the government will actually implement the tough new provisions of the Right to Education (RTE) legislation.

State education minister Balashaeb Thorat said his department was in the process of modifying the law to prevent interviews of students for admission to primary schools, or for charging capitation fee to admit students.

Currently, schools openly take donations and rarely face any action, if at all. “That’s not entirely true. We do take action against schools when we get complaints from parents. They have to approach any education authority and we ensure they get justice if the complaint is found to be genuine,” said state Education Secretary Sanjay Kumar.

But many complaints are not filed simply because the parents do not want to reveal their identity, and because of the cumbersome court procedure.

“But we can’t do anything if parents do not reveal their identities since we have to lodge a court case against the schools. We also have a supervisory mechanism in place that checks on such irregularities at the school level,” Kumar said.

Starting April 1, 2010, under the Right to Education (RTE) legislation, which applies to primary and secondary education (Class 1 to 8), any school found interviewing students and parents for admissions will face a penalty of Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000.

Also, a school asking for donations will have to pay, as penalty, 10 times the amount asked as donation.

This is as opposed to the Rs 5,000 penalty currently specified by Maharashtra’s Prohibition of Capitation Fee Act, 1987.

Another issue, according to experts, is that the new provisions apply only from Classes 1 to 8, and not to pre-primary schools, in which the problem is more rampant.

Officials, however, point out that the existing capitation Act covers any institution, including kindergarten, pre-primary, balwadi or nursery school, college or any educational institution, that is not covered by the RTE Act. For donations, it specifies imprisonment that can extend up to two years.

Source: HT

Mumbai: Recently, the Maharashtra government issued orders directing all schools in the state not to detain or fail any student between Classes 1 to 8, an official said.

The government order was issued making this policy effective from the current academic year 2009-2010.

It has been issued under the provisions of the Right to Education Act passed recently by the central government.

As per the government directive, those students who have been failed this year will be now promoted to the next class.

Source: IANS

The Government Girls’ Middle School at Sherpur village in Madhya Pradesh is now being widely recognised as “Lalita Ka School”.

Lalita is no politician but a gritty 15-year-old, whose firm determination to study has motivated other girls to follow suit at the same very school from where she studied from Class VI to VIII.

Lalita, who has moved to another school for her further studies now, was the lone student in all the grades for the last three years, but this did not discourage her from continuing her studies.

The school, located about 50 kms from here, did not deter Lalita to travel all along to attend classes in Standard VI, VII and VIII, where three male teachers helped her out in all the subjects.

The teenager cleared her Class VIII exams with first class marks, inspiring other girls in her area to take up studies in that school. Her father Madanlal Girwal, a government employee was initially a little bit worried as she was alone in the classes but then supported his daughter seeing her zeal for education.

Her parents have now decided to let Lalita continue her students in another school, where she isn’t alone. Middle School Head Master Ashok Jaat said, “there were better schools around..Hence attendance of girls at our institute was thin. But now things have changed after Lalita scored first class marks. Now nearly 15 girls have taken admission in our school.” The population of Sherpur is 700, Jaat said.

With the Right to Education Act coming into force, India has joined the league of over 130 countries which have legal guarantees to provide free and compulsory education to children.

According to the UNESCO’s ‘Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2010’, about 135 countries have constitutional provisions for free and non-discriminatory education for all.

However, the report says that despite the legal guarantee of free education, primary school fees continue to be charged in some countries.

It also cited a 2005 World Bank survey, which stated only 13 countries impart primary education totally free of cost. In majority of countries, some direct costs have been reported though no tuition fees are charged.

“In reality, free primary schooling still remains the exception rather than the rule,” says the report.

Chile tops the list of countries in providing free education for a period of 15 years to a child. It gives free and compulsory education to children in the age group of six to 21 years.

The Latin American country, where elementary education was among the worst two decades ago, had implemented a special education programme in 1990 which recorded a significant improvement among primary and upper primary students.

There are seven countries such as Germany, Belgium, Italy and Norway that have provisions of free compulsory education to children covering their entire schooling period.

Countries like Britain and New Zealand have made education compulsory and free for children for a period of 11 years.

Spain, France, Norway and Canada are among the 19 nations where education is free of cost for a duration of 10 years, ranging from the age of five to 15 or six to 16 years.

There are 34 countries, including Japan, Finland, Russia and Sweden where a child gets nine years of compulsory education, according to the report.

In India, the Right to Education law, providing free and compulsory schooling to children in the 6—14 year age bracket, came into force yesterday.

With the new education act now operational, India has joined some 20 other countries including Afghanistan, China and Switzerland which have laws guaranteeing free and compulsory education for eight years of elementary education.

India’s neighbours such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan do not have any law providing free education, where as Bangladesh and Myanmar have such provisions for a four-year-period while Nepal has five years of compulsory schooling.

According to the report, there are seven countries, including Romania and Brazil whose laws define seven years of compulsory education for a child, while five countries, including the Philippines and Georgia give children legal right to education for a period of six years.

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq and eight other countries have the provision of five years of free education for children.

However, there are over 50 countries, including the US, South Africa, Malaysia and a majority of Sub-Saharan African countries which do not have any constitutional provision to provide free and compulsory education to children.

The UNESCO report, however, does not have data about certain countries on whether they have any constitutional provision of providing free education.

The report also states that some countries have achieved extraordinary progress in their education system and the number of children dropping out from schools has declined by 33 million worldwide since 1999.

Source: PTI

What are your views on the decision? Let us know in the comment below!

Did you know, when Sachin was little he would practice for hours at the nets? If he got tired, his coach would put a one-rupee-coin on the top of the stumps as an incentive for any bowler who could dismiss him. But, if Sachin passed the whole session without getting out; his coach would give him the coin instead.

20 years since, the world hails this young boy as the world’s greatest batsman of all time.

Aviva thanks Sachin’s teacher for giving us the little master.

You too can thank Achrekar Sir, just write your message here and we will send him a card with your name and message on it.