The Doon School, Dehradun

Established in 1935 as an organic Indian public school modelled upon Britain’s legendary boarding schools, TDS is routinely voted India’s premier legacy residential school in all media opinion polls

Ranked India’s premier legacy (i.e. traditional) boarding school in four successive Education World-C fore annual surveys of India’s Most Respected Schools, The Doon School (TDS), Dehradun (Uttarakhand) has attained iconic status within middle class India as the nursery of the country’s most famous political, bureaucracy, industry, professional and media leaders.

Illustrious political alumni include the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, former external affairs minister Dinesh Singh, and eminent parliament-arians Piloo Mody, Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh. To the armed forces TDS has contributed the late Air Chief Marshal L.M. Katre, Lt. Gen A.M. Sethna, and Major Gen. K.S. Brar, among a host of defence services top brass. Industry leaders shaped by TDS include inter alia the late L.M. Thapar, Ajit Haksar, Arun Bharat Ram and Dr. Parvinder Singh. Arts and letters alumni include Vikram Seth and London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor, and to journalism and media the school has contributed old Doscos Prem Shankar Jha, Rahul Singh, Karan Thapar and Aroon Purie. All these eminences from an arm-length list, received their secon-dary and higher secondary schooling in this highly reputed class VII-XII all-boys’ boarding school (estb.1935) affiliated with the Delhi-based Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the Geneva-based Internat-ional Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO).

Although relatively young compared to some of the country’s vintage boarding schools which were specially promoted for the education of children of British and foreign residents of pre-independence India, TDS was concept-ualised by a Delhi-based barrister Satish Ranjan Das (1870-1928) as an organic Indian public school, albeit modelled upon imperial Britain’s legendary public (i.e private, exclusive) schools Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Marlborough. Although Das died before TDS admitted its first batch of students on September 10, 1935, the promoters’ board he chaired set exacting standards and specifi-cations for the country’s first genuinely Indian public school — “the teaching of science which had been started at Harrow; the good teacher-student relationship and high academic standard which had been developed at Shrewsbury; the system of organised games which had originated in Marlb-orough…” wrote Sumer B. Singh in an authorised institutional biography titled Doon — The Story of a School (1985).

Self-evidently, this onerous mandate was discharged successfully because over the past 76 years since the first batch of 72 boys commenced classes in the ivy-covered red brick buildings of the former Imperial Forest College and Research Institute on the 70-acre Chandbagh Estate of Dehradun, TDS has built itself an awesome reputation for delivering well-rounded holistic secondary education.

Perhaps for its excellence, India’s premier legacy boarding school has acquired an unwarranted reputation as a super-exclusive elite school for the pampered progeny of India’s — especially north India’s — rich and famous. This is an institutional image which Dr. Peter McLaughlin, TDS’ first expatriate headmaster in 38 years, is bent upon correcting. “Far from being an exclusive school for the children of the rich and famous, it is pertinent to note that over 120 of our students are on variable scholarships. We attract the country’s best calibre teachers who shape our students into mature, insightful and high-potential school-leavers,” says Northern Ireland-born McLaughlin, an alumnus of the universities of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, London and the London School of Economics who served as principal of the British International School, Cairo and Casterton Girls’ School, UK prior to being selected and appointed head-master of TDS in 2009 after a global headhunt.

McLaughlin believes that with TDS having developed excellent teaching-learning systems and pedagogic skills, it’s time for this 76-year-old school to extend its outreach programme and share proven best practices with the wider academic community and broaden the school’s inclusive culture. “Given the population and size of the country, India needs 2,500 Doon schools. To this end we have adopted six little brother and sister primary schools in our neighbour-hood to whom we have extended our outreach development programme. Moreover, one of the distinguishing features of TDS is that we have accumulated a sizeable endowment corpus of Rs.12 crore — mainly by tapping our alumni base — which funds our scholarship programme,” says McLaughlin.

The school’s compact campus is near-optimally laid out and landscaped and its red brick and stone buildings house well-equipped biology, physics and chemistry labs, a state-of the-art computer department and IT centre with 120 terminals, the Rajiv Gandhi Design and Technology Centre and unique physics and natural history museums. Moreover the school’s Kilachand Library offers access to 18,000 docum-ents comprising books and multimedia.

Wholly committed to the mens sana in corpore sano credo of great legacy boarding schools around the world, TDS offers its 500 students excellent sports facilities which include a 25-metre swimming pool, four squash courts, two new all-weather basketball courts, four new all-weather tennis courts, cricket grounds, and dedicated hockey and soccer fields, as also boxing, badminton, gymnastics and table tennis playing facilities in a bracing climate.

Against this backdrop of an avant garde public school offering world class academic learning supported by excel-lent co-curricular and extra-curricular education, it’s hardly surprising that TDS receives 550 admission applications every year against which it admits the 70 who top its written exam and interview process. Little wonder also, that it’s routinely voted India’s premier traditional (cf. new genre international) boarding school in all media opinion polls.

Nevertheless McLaughlin believes there’s room for improvement. “Our recently drawn up ten-year development plan envisages a fundraising drive which will grow our institutional corpus to Rs.70 crore. Thereafter the percentage of merit scholarship students will be raised to 50 percent. The objective of our ten-year plan is to blend our heritage and history with the wider community to transform TDS into a model institution for residential schools round the world,” says McLaughlin.

A search for excellence which not only needs to be adulated but emulated.

Dilip Thakore (Dehradun)