R.N. Podar School, Mumbai

R.N. Podar School, Mumbai, RNPS is a top-bracket class I-XII CBSE affiliated co-ed day school in urbs prima indis. Sunayana Nair

Founded in 1998, Ramniranjan Podar School (RNPS) is the CBSE-affiliated school of the Mumbai-based Podar Education Network (estb. 1927), run by the Anandilal Podar Trust whose first president was Mahatma Gandhi. Currently the Podar group comprises 57 education institutions concentrated in western (Maharashtra, Gujarat), central (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh) and southern (Karnataka) India, with an aggregate enrolment of 70,000 students mentored by 4,000 teachers.

Clustered in the suburb of Santacruz with several Podar Group schools — Lilavatibai Podar Sr. Secondary School (affiliated with CISCE), Podar International School (IB) and Podar International School (SSC) — RNPS is a class I-XII co-ed day school, ranked in the top bracket of schools of urbs prima indis. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2013, RNPS was ranked among the country’s Top 30 (#28) co-ed day schools, #10 in Maharashtra and #8 in Mumbai. Moreover in 2008, CBSE recognised RNPS as a centre of excellence, and the school has been involved with content building for the recently introduced CBSE-i (International) curriculum.

Affiliated with CBSE since 2000 and CBSE-i (International) since 2011, over the past 15 years RNPS has acquired a good reputation in the nation’s commercial capital for innovative use of technology, research and breakthrough processes. “We have consciously and purposively established RNPS as a CBSE school because it is the most progressive and dynamic school board of the country, and is constantly introducing education reforms. This poses a huge challenge as well as opportunity for the school to continuously reinvent education processes and practices. Closely involved with the board, we are in the vanguard of 37 CBSE-affiliated schools in Mumbai piloting the board’s new initiatives for other schools to follow,” says Avnita Bir, an economics postgrad of the Delhi School of Economics and a member of CBSE’s governing council who was appointed principal of RNPS in 2003, and prepared the first batches of the formerly state board-affiliated school for CBSE’s class X and XII exams.

Since then, RNPS students have been performing consistently well in board and other public examinations. In last year’s CBSE exams, 62 of the 180 students who wrote the class X boards averaged 90 percent plus and 148 of the 236 students who wrote the class XII exam averaged more than 90 percent. Earlier in 2012, 44 science stream students from the school were admitted into the country’s 16 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) which admit a mere 3 percent of the 500,000 students who write the annual IIT-JEE (IIT joint entrance exam).

According to Bir, RNPS students’ excellent academic performance is because “results-driven high academic benchmarks are non-negotiable” in the school’s teaching-learning culture which is customised to meet the needs of every learner. “We are the first school to introduce the flipped learning model developed in association with Phyzok Learning Solutions, a BITS-Pilani based enterprise, which enables us to effectively develop experiential individual curriculums based on the understanding, evaluation and progress of each student. Moreover after developing a pilot with the non-profit educational website Khan Academy, we have video recorded all our lectures which can be seen by students anytime anywhere and any number of times. This has also freed teachers’ classroom time allowing for deeper engagement and problem-solving,” says Bir.

Unsurprisingly, RNPS which has an aggregate enrolment of 2,015 students including 912 girls on its 2.5 acre campus, offers excellent supportive infrastructure. It includes 28 air-conditioned fully wired classrooms equipped with Smart boards, state-of-the-art laboratories for physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and computer science and a well-stocked library with 10,628 titles, 7,400 reference books and 33 journal subscriptions. Co-curricular education groups and clubs are encouraged as is life skills education (public speaking, presentation and critical thinking, theatre and a Heritage Club certified among the country’s best by INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage)). Sports facilities are provided for table tennis, basketball and chess and field games such as football are played on a 1.5-acre playground sited within a km from the school.

“RNPS is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in integrating ICT technologies which has enabled us to train our teachers and students through our network of educators, technology experts and policy formu-lators. We believe in freely sharing our best practices and innovations in integrating technology into  clas-rooms with other schools and tea-chers. We will continue to improve our pedagogies and curriculums and are willing to pass on the benefits of our development to government and other schools,” says Bir.

Way to go!