Gitanjali Devashray, the nodal school for the Secunderabad cluster of the climate EduXchange India Programme being implemented together by TERI and Dell, hosted the city level competitions of debate and quiz. Children from about 12 schools participated in the city finals and debated if political will is more important than public awareness to combat climate change. Lasya Venneti and Shreya Surana from Gitanjali Devashray stood winners while the second place went to the students from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan stood first in quiz competition. Ayesha Nousheen from Madina Public School won the first prize in painting competition while T.V.Aishwarya of Gitanjali Senior School stood second. Third prize went to A.Prashanti from St.Joseph's Public School. All winners received cash prizes. A four-day film-making workshop too was conducted in the school.

Jan Heritage school

Jain Heritage a Cambridge School at Kondapur, conducted its second Investiture Ceremony on Saturday in the school premises. S. Umapathy, the IGP-CID was the chief guest and gave charge to the house-masters of the four houses, Abhay, Ananth, Aditya and Anant. Head boy David led the school student council members who all received badges and sashes before taking oath.

Progress High School

The newly elected school cabinet of The Progress High School, Falaknuma led by Mohd. Kaleem and Shafia Amreen was installed recently by the Correspondent Mirza Mustafa Ali Baig.

In another event, select students from the school were trained as traffic commandos by the police and presented with blazers and badges.

Maharishi Vidya Mandir

Students and staff members of Maharishi Vidya Mandir participated in group meditation and bhajans conducted as part of Guru Purnima celebrations. Principal Vasanthy Parasuraman explained the importance of the festival.

It was literally the battle of brains at the Hyderabad edition of Tata Consultancy Services' IT Wiz 2010 held at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan on Thursday.

Six teams, comprising two contestants each, were selected from over 1,000 students in a preliminary round to compete in the Hyderabad finals. The teams were quizzed on autonomic computing, which deals with the changes in IT industry, cloud computing, ‘@TCS', parallel computing, grid computing and general knowledge pertaining to the IT industry.

Interestingly, in the first round, the contestants were asked a question by N. Chandrasekaran, CEO and MD of TCS, on a video link. Every time a question was asked by quiz master Giri ‘Pickbrain' Balasubramaniam, children in the audience would break into discussions of their own and applause their respective team when they got the right answer. Ratna Prabha, Principal Secretary, IT and C Department, and V. Rajanna, vice-president and Regional Head of TCS, were also present at the event.

Two tie-breakers

Right from audio-visual questions to clues and a specific quiz on TCS, queries were shot at students related to IT buzzwords, personalities, companies, software products and brands. The cut throat competition was such that the last round had two tie breakers.

The first question in the tie-breaker was ‘Who invented hotmail along with Sabeer Bhatia?' within no time, the students of FIIT JEE and Little Flower High School, Abids, answered, ‘Jack Smith'.

With two teams tied again in first place, another question was shot at them. “What is a ghost profile in a social networking site?” To this, the students of FIIT JEE, Krishna Akhil and Rohan Naidu answered, “Profile of a person who has died,” hence breaking the tie and bagged the first place.

The second prize was given to Syed Murtuza Hashmi and B. Asher from Little Flower High School, Abids, and the third place was tied between Aditya Gupta and Anurag Veturi from Chirec Public School, K.V.S. Lokesh and G. Sai Teja from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Jubilee Hills and P.Kaushik and Shubam Vyas from Sri Chaitanya Junior College.

The regional winners will participate in the national finals in December.

The Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV) schools have always had in place a system of education that combine ideals of quality education and access to all without discrimination.

Very often, children of Group D government employees and jawans study along with those of senior officials in KV schools. V. Meenakshi, principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya (Malleswaram), told The Hindu that children at KV schools come from a variety of backgrounds. “This is the unique quality of our institutions. Many parents prefer to admit their children in our institutions, as they want them to be rooted to reality. Children will not be insulated from reality, like those in the elite, private schools,” she said. This, she added, ensures all-round development of the child.

Chandrakanth K. from the Archaeological Survey of India agreed. “I admitted my daughter in KV mainly because she will get to interact with those from all strata of society. Teachers here do not distinguish between the children and all are treated equally,” he said.

Harshita Vijayakumar, whose husband works in the police department, said that she was keen on admitting her three-year-old son to a KV. “The children here grow up with the right values and outlook towards life. Also, nothing can be said about the excellent infrastructure at KV schools. At KV institutions, quality is never compromised,” she said.

However, there have been stray cases when a few parents were concerned about their wards. “These instances are very rare. Mostly children of government employees are admitted to KV. In case they are apprehensive, for whatever the reason, we counsel the parents and explain to them the values of KV,” Ms. Meenakshi added.

Nirmala Mohanan, Education Officer, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghatan, Bangalore Region, said that the KV institutions were pioneers in the field of education in the country.

The schools have been following the principles of the RTE long before the Act was passed. She said that for classes one to eight, no tuition fee is collected, only developmental fee. No fee is collected from girl students and at least two seats per section are reserved for girls.

Onam is the biggest festival in the Indian state of Kerala. Onam Festival falls during the Malayali month of Chingam (Aug - Sep) and marks the homecoming of legendary King Mahabali. Carnival of Onam lasts for ten days and brings out the best of Kerala culture and tradition. Intricately decorated Pookalam, ambrosial Onasadya, breathtaking Snake Boat Race and exotic Kaikottikali dance are some of the most remarkable features of Onam - the harvest festival in Kerala.

Welcoming a Very Special Visitor
Onam awaits one very special visitor, Kerala's most loved legendary King Maveli. He is the King who once gave the people a golden era in Kerala. The King is so much attached to his kingdom that it is believed that he comes annually from the nether world to see his people living happily. It is in honour of King Mahabali, affectionately called Onathappan, that Onam is celebrated.

Womenfolk make special arrangements to welcome Onathappan. Flower carpets are laid in the front courtyards with dedication and full sincerity. A grand meal is prepared on the day of Thiru Onam. It is on this day that Maveli's spirit visits Kerala. Lip smacking meal consists of best of Kerala cuisine including avial, sambhar, rasam, parippu and the payasam.

Cultural Extravaganza
One of the most marvelous facets of Onam is the unfolding of its rich and well-established culture. We see not just glimpses but a whole gamut of it in the ten-day-long carnival. Pulikali, Kaikottikali, Kummattikalli, Kathakali, Thumbi Thullal besides several other folk arts and traditions can be seen on one platform called Onam.

Of Unity and Team Spirit
The beauty of the festival lies in it's secular fabric. People of all religions, castes and communities celebrate the festival with equal joy and verve. Onam also helps to create an atmosphere of peace and brotherhood by way of various team sports organised on the day.

Onam is the passion of the people of Kerala. And, pride of India! 

The Indian education system has to be reformed to enable students to get quality education and to prepare them for the world market, said G. Viswanathan, Chancellor, VIT University, on Wednesday.

Addressing members of Indo-American Chamber of Commerce as part of ‘Meet success first hand' series, he said “We have a rigid higher education policy that never allows students to switch over to other subjects. We have to introduce flexibility. Curriculum has to be updated on a regular basis. Amendments have to be made to education policy and more money has to be spent on higher education.”

Universities offered higher education the world over, but in India it was the colleges that did so. These colleges did not have adequate infrastructure and that's why they were lagging behind in terms of global ranking of universities.

“We have to follow the US model, where the numbers are high and the quality is good. Unless we give quality education, it will not be possible to sustain the growth. We need qualified youngsters,” he said.

Noting that only IISc and IIT Kharagpur were mentioned in the Best 500 Universities in the World, he said “We have a long way to go in terms of higher education. Only 12 per cent of 220 million students have access to higher education in terms of gross enrolment ratio. Government alone cannot invest money and it calls for contributions from private sector. Besides, only four per cent of the GDP was spent on higher education against the targeted six per cent. We have been lobbying to get higher funds for education as well as for the health. ”

The Chancellor said that state governments should step in to offer education free to eligible candidates. Tamil Nadu government had exempted tuition fees to first generation graduate students, while the Andhra Pradesh Government paid tuition fees to poor students. “If Andhra Pradesh can do it why not other states?” he asked.

Mr. Viswanathan said that poor people should be extended help based on their economic status and education qualifications instead of the present reservation based on caste/religion. He pointed out that State governments do not fund private universities and the funds offered by the Union Government were insufficient. Industries should come forward to help private universities with regard to research, publications and patents.

“Despite all these funding problems, VIT students were able to successfully develop Rohini-200, a sounding rocket in collaboration with ISRO,” he said.