Hi Karan, I'm the other English language person on this thread (who never did "...let [George] know how I [got] on").
Yes, you need to be not only a teacher or a student, but a teacher or student at a school or institution recognized by the relevant government ministry (actually, being an employee might be enough, even if you don't teach?). There's a list of accredited "academic" institutions, and if your institution is not on it, then tough luck. I was a case of tough luck. Even though I teach actual university students and they get credits towards their degrees, technically I'm employed by a company that is owned by the university, not the university itself, & thus I didn't meet the requirements.
As George said, Amazon seems to have the best deals.
Aperture is good too. Until recently I used it (and still do at times). However, I wanted the radial tool and the gradient tool in Lightroom. For many things, Aperture will do just fine. I prefer it's file organisation & workflow generally. Really, you can pretty much do anything in Aperture that you can in Lightroom. Lightroom is possibly able to do some more tricky things better or faster, but some would debate that. Lightroom probably trumps on perspective / straightening. In many ways, at half the price (?), Aperture could be considered a far better deal. If you go the Aperture way, Patrick La Roque's blog, that I've listed below, has lots of useful, real world stuff. Look at the technical articles, and ignore the rest about updates, etc. I've given the link where the first Aperture 3 tech article starts in his blog (& for Lightroom users too, these articles give good general aesthetic advise & good ideas that can be explored with the same or similar tools). If you are a total novice, then then I'd recommend following the Apple online tutorials, and checking out other basic tutorials online first. Ultimately with the Aperture vs Lightroom debate, I just dunno really. It's an area where people often have strong opinions, and saying what I've just said could get me screamed at on certain forums.
I guess my end advice is kinda odd - if price is an issue, pick Aperture. If price is not an issue, either a) pick Aperture and only move up if it doesn't do what you want at some future date, or b) pick Lightroom from the get go.
http://www.laroquephoto.com/blog/?offset=1270478370000&reversePaginate =true&category=aperture
Not sure that it will, but I hope this helps.