Spelling Bee is back this year with the theme "School of Excellence".

The fourth season of the English spelling competition was launched at The Daily Star Centre yesterday afternoon.

The programme marked the beginning of the month-long online round where students of class VI to class X of both Bangla and English medium schools can register for free. In the online round, students play a spelling game and based on their scores they will be selected for the next round.

Hosted by Champs21.com, an initiative of The Daily Star, the competition first started in 2012 and is aired on Channel i.

This year Summit Group joined as sponsor of the event.

Muhammed Aziz Khan, chairman of the group, said, "Learning is the biggest equaliser in the whole world."

Shykh Seraj, director and head of news at Channel i, spoke about the programme's growing popularity, as in its last season more than 273,000 students from 1,600 schools participated in the online round.   

Students who have more words in their minds are able to understand, express and communicate better, said Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, addressing the guardians present at the programme.

Russell T Ahmed, chief executive officer of Champs21.com, apologised for the delay in starting this year's season. "We usually start in February but due to the political situation we could not."

Ahmed said out of the total participants of the online round, the top 10 percent scorers will be selected for the divisional round, from where 96 will be taken to the television round.

This year teachers can also select students through spelling tests at schools and send the list to Champs21.com for direct participation in the divisional round, which will take place between June 23 and August 7.