Cathedral & John Connon School, Mumbai

Ranked #1 in Maharashtra and Mumbai in the EW India School Rankings 2013, this vintage school (estb. 1860) has acquired a national reputation

One of Mumbai’s landmark institutions and the must-go-to K-12 school of the old elite of India’s commercial capital, the Cathedral & John Connon School (CJCS, estb.1860), sited in trendy south Mumbai, has acquired a national reputation for academic excellence and holistic education.

In the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2013, CJCS was ranked India’s #3 co-ed day school and #1 in Maharashtra and Mumbai by a specially constituted community of 5,779 respondents countrywide. Currently this premier school affiliated with the Delhi-based Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) comprises the pre-primary, infant, junior, middle and senior schools in five buildings, which host 1,950 students mentored by 145 teachers. Unsurprisingly, this vintage school’s alumni roll reads like a Who’s Who of Indian history, industry and intelligentsia and includes Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Ratan Tata, former chairman of the Tata business empire, and his successor Cyrus Mistry, Booker Prize novelist Salman Rushdie and journalist/columnist Fareed Zakaria among a host of illustrious businessmen and intellectuals.

“The excellent reputation that CJCS has established in India’s commercial capital and indeed nationally and globally, is built on the foundation of our liberal Christian heritage which promotes values-based education, and the strong commitment of our dedicated and progressive faculty who deliver education far beyond the prescribed curriculum,” says Meera Isaacs, an English literature and education postgraduate of Pune University and the St. Xavier’s Institute of Education, who began her career at the Carmel Convent School, Delhi (1973-1977) before signing up with CJCS in 1977 as an English and history teacher.

In 1996, Isaacs was appointed principal and has since transformed this historic institution into a contemporary K-12 school whose heritage facades boast impressive new technologies-enabled academic infrastructure including 64 IT-enabled classrooms equipped with electronic smart boards, multimedia projection equipment, four air-conditioned auditoriums, state-of-the-art music and art studios and computer laboratories, separate laboratories for physics, chemistry and biology, and three large libraries housing an aggregate of 35,000 books and digital content accessible through approximately 500 e-books and multimedia CDs.

Sustained investment in enabling new technologies and in-service teacher training — all teachers have to undergo professional training on an ongoing basis — have produced excellent academic outcomes in CISCE’s school-leaving class X and XII exams.

In the results for the academic year 2013-14 declared in June, of the 143 CJCS students who wrote CISCE’s class X exam, 102 averaged more than 90 percent with the cohort averaging 91.14. Likewise, the 107 students who wrote the class XII exam averaged 88.42 percent, with 56 scoring 90 percent-plus.

CJCS’ excellent reputation for learning outcomes is confirmed by the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2013, in which the 154-year-old institution was adjudged India’s #1 school (together with eight others) on the parameter of academic reputation with a perceptual score of 95. Moreover, its top ranking was subsequently confirmed by a factual score of 88.75 percent culled by Dr. Geeta Kingdon and Prashant Bhattacharji from CISCE records (see EW June 2014). In addition, CJCS is authorised to offer Plus Two students tutoring for the Advanced Program of the US-based College Board to develop the knowledge and critical thinking skills required by American universities, and for which US-bound students are given credits by several American colleges.

In conformity with a tradition of dispensing broad-based liberal education, the CJCS management accords considerable emphasis to co and extra-curricular education. The school has a long tradition of sacred music, hosts excellent dramatics, debate and elocution societies and a nationally renowned school choir. Little wonder that CJCS school-leavers are welcomed by leading universities in India and abroad. Among the latter are Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Imperial College and Cambridge, some of which exempt CJCS applicants from writing English proficiency tests.

Sports education is also an ancient tradition in this school which boasts prize-winning soccer, rugby, cricket, basketball, gymnastics, athletics and swimming squads. To compensate for the limitation of owning just three basketball courts and a small play area, the school’s management utilises the neighbouring Karnataka cricket ground and has a special relationship with the Bombay Gymkhana.

Constrained from expanding capacity in Mumbai, in August 2008, the CJCS management promoted the Cathedral Vidya School (CVS), Lonavala, sited on an 11-acre scenic campus in this hill station, 89 km from Mumbai. Currently this wholly residential school affiliated with CISCE, CIE (UK) and IBO has an aggregate enrolment of 240 students including 70 girls. “In 2015, CJCS Mumbai, hopes to begin its IB diploma programme — the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream for us,” says Isaacs.

NADIA LEWIS