A student from the audience attempts to answer a question at a quiz at BITM

An inter-school quiz held recently sought to find out just how aware students at North 24-Parganas are of traffic rules, vis-a-vis their city counterparts.

Fifteen schools qualified for the finals of the quiz contest on road safety and environment, held on April 12 at the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM). The event was organised by the NGO Friends in Need Everywhere (FINE) and BITM.

“A large number of students die in road accidents every year. Since 2009, we have been visiting schools and educating students on road safety,” said Partha Ghosh, the coordinator of FINE.

Young performers of Little Angels Montessori sing and dance at their annual concert recently

In the preliminary stage, quiz contests and essay-writing competitions had been conducted in 41 schools from five zones — Barasat I, Barasat II, Dum Dum, Rajarhat and Madhyamgram-Birati.

The finals saw three-member teams lock horns in a nail-biting contest. The quiz started with a general round on flora and fauna, followed by an exciting visual round where pictures of the Suez Canal, acid rain in Mexico and the recent tsunami in Japan were shown for participants to identify.

It was an enlightening experience for the children. “I had no idea how much the seas are being polluted by cigarette buds,” said Class IX student Dipnarayan Deb.

A stiff competition later, Barasat Mahatma Gandhi Memorial High School clinched the trophy, followed by Barasat PCS Government High School and Jyangra Adarsha Vidyalaya in Baguiati.

“We did not prepare especially for this event but just relied on our general awareness,” said Class IX student Avijit Naskar, a part of the winning team.

CHIT CHAT

NCC scholarships

BETWEEN THE LINES: Students perform at a two-day cultural programme organised by the NGO Turning Point outside Madhusudan Mancha on April 14 and 15. The event included an awareness campaign on mental health. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray

Eight NCC cadets from the state won the annual Sahara scholarships at a special event organised at MC Kejriwal Vidyapeeth, Liluah, on April 8. Seven scholarships were won by former students of the host school. The scholarships, of Rs 12,000 each, and merit certificates were given away by Lt-Col C.S. Satyanarayana, the officer commanding in chief of the 21 Bengal Battalion of the NCC. The winners were Harshit Gupta, Ashish Kumar Sharma, Abhishek Agarwal, Manas Shaw, Prateek Kabra, Manish Kumar Gupta and Nitin Dabriwal.

Musical battle

The secondary section of Birla High School for Girls held an inter-house music competition recently. The four houses got 15 minutes each to prove their singing prowess in Eastern and Western music. The Mauryas chose soft romantic songs for both sections, while the Kushans’ vocal skills drew a huge round of applause. The performance of each house was very different from each other and the audience had a great time throughout.

Priyanka Jain & Avantika Gupta

Annual concert

Jibreel International School organised its annual concert at the Science City auditorium on March 31. The event started with a seminar, followed by a cultural programme staged by around 700 students between two and 12 years of age. The children danced to some catchy numbers and also staged a play on freedom fighters.

Banking basics

The Class XII students of Apeejay School, Park Street, attended an interactive session on banking and economy at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently. Issues like currency management, how to differentiate between a fake and a real note and measures taken by the RBI to control the flow of counterfeit notes were discussed in the first half of the session. The second half was devoted to discussing RBI’s monetary policy and the measures being taken to control inflation. After the seminar, the students were taken on a tour of the bank.