super 30

A former Japanese beauty queen and actress is making a documentary film on a Bihar mathematician and his innovative and successful experiment of setting up a Super 30 school that sends children from poor families to top engineering colleges in India.Norika Fujiwara, 36, the 1992 Miss Japan and a popular model, was in Bihar last week for a shoot.The Super 30 school takes a group of 30 students mainly from poor and rural backgrounds. The students are given free coaching, food, accommodation and other facilities to help them crack the highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE).It is supported with the income generated from the Ramanujan School of Mathematics run by Anand Kumar. The Ramanujan institute has students from affluent families who can afford to pay to fulfil their dreams.Anand Kumar is actively helped by Bihar's Additional Director-General of Police Abhyanand, who teaches physics despite his busy schedule of monitoring crime in the state known for its high rate of lawlessness.Super 30 took shape five years ago and its success can serve as a model for other such institutes across India.Last year, 28 of its 30 students, nearly half of them from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and three from the Scheduled Castes category, made it to the IIT- JEE.The number has been steadily growing over the years. Eighteen students cracked the IIT-JEE in 2003 the year Super 30 was set up. The number rose to 22 in 2004 and 26 in 2005.