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Schools need a website to reach out to current parents, potential parents, potential and current staff, media and host of other people. A good website (visually and functionally) can make a lasting impression and at the same time a bad one can lead to frustrations.

Here are 10 tips to make sure your school website provides a good experience for your audience:

Tip 1: Host Your School Website With a Reliable Hosting Company

Always ensure your site is hosted with a reliable hosting company and is up 24/7. Do some research on the hosting service provider before selecting them. You should monitor your site for uptime using one of the several free tools available on the internet. Some of them are: http://www.siteuptime.com/ and http://host-tracker.com/

Tip 2: Ensure the Contact Form and Emails Work

I have seen this problem with lot of Indian schools and it in a way defects the purpose of two way communication between the visitor and the school, yes I am talking about the email listing on the site not working or the contact form on the site not working. Imagine you are looking at the school website at mid night (for whatever reason) and decide to shoot of a query to the school, only to get a bounce mail stating “email could not be delivered as the user has exceeded his quote limits” or “email could not be delivered as the email id does not exist”. Believe me this is very common as schools have no one to manage the emails they get.

Please make sure your school does not do this mistake and your emails and contact forms work. Test them periodically!

Tip 3: Ensure School Website is Not All Looks But is Search Engine Friendly As Well

Is your school site completely flash based? There is a big problem with that. Search engines, which are the drivers of web traffic do not know how to read flash. Thus your site is a black box for them and most likely won’t show up in their search results. Flash sites no doubt are visually appealing but a good mix of flash and html would give it a balance by it being SEO friendly and visually appealing as well.

Tip 4: Design and Develop a Effective Home Page

Make sure home page of your site allows user to get a glace of the most important things about your school and allows them to choose a navigation path to dig deeper.

Tip 5: Use Content Management Systems (CMS) to Manage Your Site Content

School sites have lot of content update requirements and a static html site is not ideally suited for this requirement. It is best to have a CMS system driven website which allows easy update of the website content. This can make a difference world of difference as lot of school sites out there have outdated information on them. There are plenty of quality free cms systems out there: drupal, joomla, wordpress etc.

Tip 6: Ensure Ease of Access to Contact Information

Make sure your contact details, phone, address, address map, email etc is well placed on the site for users to contact you conveniently.

Tip 7: Avoid Flash Intro Pages

Avoid intro flash splash pages as they do no good but harm you a lot. Splash pages mostly hide all the inner pages of the site from the search engines, resulting in lower visibility of your website.

Tip 8: Use Multi Level Drop Down Menu to Organize and Show Pages

If you have lot of pages on your school website, it might be worth while to create pull down / drop down menus to expose inner pages. This company offers very stable drop down menu creator which is easy to configure: http://www.opencube.com/

Tip 9: Use Quality Graphics and Brand Site Effectively

Ensure strong brand presence and quality graphics on your site to leave a lasting impression. It may cost you a little but always seek professional help with website creation.

Tip 10: Incorporate Social Media Features on the School Website

Make the site social media friendly by incorporating flickr (for photo gallery), social bookmarking tools and a blog on your site.

There are plenty of other things you can do to ensure your school reaches out to the target audience effectively and leaves a lasting good impression on them. For professional help on website design, development and internet marketing consult Zitz Solutions, a company specializing in education websites and internet marketing.

Chalk and talk schools are a thing of the past. Modern era has ushered in changes in every sphere of life, how could education be left behind? New age schools, known as international schools are taking over. These schools comprise students and staff who come from different cultures and teach syllabi which represent a global perspective. For expats, this could turn out to be the best option. However, don’t mistake any school which offers American, Canadian, the GCSE (British), the IB (International Baccalaureate) or the IGCSE (the international component of the British GCSE) international curriculums to be an international school. Schools which incorporate IB and the IGCSE are truly international schools. In India, you will find that most international schools offer a combination of IB, ICSE and IGCSE.

Is an international school worthwhile? If you’ve ascertained the standard of education in the school and can afford to put your child in one, it definitely is! When compared to the monotonous syllabus and teaching aids used in traditional schools, international schools appear to be a breath of fresh air for the new age learner. International schools in India offer a good mix of cutting edge teaching and internationalism built on the necessary foundations of an Indian culture. Not just that, even after students have completed their education in international schools, they are recognized and even offered scholarships in universities world wide.

Most international schools follow the International Baccalaureate which is accepted as an entrance for universities across the world. One can easily locate International Schools in the major cities of the world, although a few are located in green spaces; hill stations or outskirts of the city with options for boarding as well. International schools offer a wide range of extra-curricular activities that broaden the child’s horizon by offering sufficient academic exposure as well as providing new interests and hobbies.

Finding the right international school for your child could turn out to be tedious procedure. Answer these questions and make the process easier for you:

1. Which accreditation has been awarded to the school?
2. Does the school follow the Indian or American year?
3. What is the background of teachers in the school?
4. What are the activities in store for your child?
5. How will they help the child get used to the latest shift in location?
6. Will transport be taken care by the school itself?
7. What is the kind of food do they serve in the café?

Before you consider the international school directly, log on to its webpage and check all the details available online. Talking to colleagues who have returned after working abroad and have enrolled their kids in schools will help you find the best international school. It is an easy option for expats as well, in case their children are used to studying in an international environment. Remember that, not all children need the same things so it is really important to find the best fit for your child.

You can also use this technology to enable the world to see your content in their choice of language. Read more about the widget and feel free to use it by getting the code from here. It translates between 29 language pairs!

Schools targeting international students might want to use this widget on their site to enable parents read the contents in the language of their choice.

Technorati tags: Bangalore Schools, Translates Bangalore Schools content, Google Translate

Expat School Bangalore

Moving to Bangalore is not the easiest of things, one can be easily overwhelmed by the traffic situation out here. But then once you get used to, it is a good place to live.

School decisions can be very painful and you need to know what are your choices as a parent in order to provide the same quality of education to your kids as they were used to outside.

Bangalore has seen a spurt in number of International schools in recent years. Some good ones for expatriate community are:

• Stonehill International School, Bangalore
• The International School Bangalore (TISB)
• Indus International School, Bangalore
• Canadian International School, Bangalore
• TREAMIS World School
• Inventure Academy, Bangalore
• Mallya Aditi International School

If you are in North side of Bangalore you have to chose from Stonehill International, Mallya Aditi and Canadian International. South Bangalore people can chose from TISB, Indus, TREAMIS (Electronics City) and Inventure.

We will keep updating the list with new and upcoming school options for expat community.

Please write your feedback and comments on this post below.

Technorati tags: TISB, Mallya Aditi International School, Indus international, TREAMIS World School, Inventure Academy Bangalore, Canadian International, expat schools in Bangalore, expat bangalore, expatriate bangalore, Stonehill International School, Bangalore

Region wise pass percentage is shown below:

1. West India: 99.38%
2. South India: 99.22%
3. East India:97.22%
4. North India: 97.55%

Top 10 class X ICSE students from Bangalore are listed below:

All students scored above 75%. The science stream toppers were Salman Kutub Kahan and Nruthya Madappa with 94.8%. Jairam Janardhan was commerce topper with 94.4%

National Public School, Rajajinagar

The school scored 100% results. the topper is Dipti Kamat with 95.2%

Sri Kumaran Children’s Home

The average for the class stood at 87%. Science topper is Samiksha Tadepalli with 95.2%. Commerce topper is Mekhala Bala with 94.4%

Sindhi High School, Hebbal

Class average: 82%

Venkat International

Secured 100% results with 31 distinctions

Delhi Public School, South Bangalore

All 24 students got first class and 21 got distinctions

National Hill View Public School

Got 100% first class and 75% distinctions

KV MEG

94% pass. Science topper is Nikhil Das with 93.7% and commerce topper is Jagannath Yadav with 87.4%

Here is the pass percentage for each of these states:

Andhra Pradesh: 88.26%

Kerala: 93.60%

Tamil Nadu: 96.19%

In Karnataka the % of total enrolment in the English medium increased from 16% to 18%.

The growth is motly in southern states (non-Hindi) which account for 60% of the students enrolled in English medium in the year between 2003-2006.

Well over 90% of enrolment in north-eastern states is in english medium.

This growth has resulted in English being the third biggest medium of education for upper primary students after Hindi and Marathi.