Ryan International School, Khargar

Promoted in 1999 to provide globally benchmarked K-12 education to children of a new suburb of India's commercial capital, RIS-K has quickly earned a reputation for education excellence

Sited on a generous — by Mumbai standards — three-acre plot in Khargar, a suburb of the satellite city of Navi Mumbai (pop.750,000), Ryan International School, Khargar (RIS-K, estb. 1999) has quickly earned a reputation for offering high-quality academic and co-curricular education. One of the first educational institutions to be promoted in Khargar — a node of Navi Mumbai conceived and cons-tructed by the Mumbai-based City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) in 1995 — RIS-K’s primary objective was to offer residents of the new suburb the option of high-quality K-12 education.

On June 13, 1999 the CISCE-board affiliated school commenced operations with its first batch of 89 students and eight teachers. Since then enrolment has burgeoned to 3,502 students instructed by 125 faculty. In the recently conducted EducationWorld-C fore Survey of India’s Most Respected Schools 2010, RIS-K was ranked among India’s top 100 day schools and 28th in the western region.

RIS-K is a constituent school of the Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI), India’s largest closely-held chain of 115 private primary-secondary schools with an aggregate enrolment of over 200,000 students countrywide. Since the group’s first school was promoted in 1975 by Dr. Augustine Pinto (chairman) and his wife Grace (managing director), RIGI has brought highly-prized, affordable English-medium ‘convent’ school education within easy reach of the country’s rapidly expanding and highly aspirational middle class (see cover story EW June 2008). RIS-K is no exception.

“RIS-K offers parents in Navi Mumbai and Khargar in particular, access to a world class school. I believe that over the past 11 years we have fulfilled our promise of delivering excellent academic and co-curricular education with strong emphasis on values and life skills development. Our students not only routinely pass the ICSE board exams in the first class but also win laurels in sports and extra-curricular activities. We are committed to producing socially responsible individuals who can assume leadership positions anywhere in the world,” says Alice Vaz, principal of RIS-K. A public administration alumna of Madurai Kamaraj University, Vaz taught in several Mumbai schools including St. Teresa’s and St. Augus-tine’s High before being appointed principal of RIS-K in its founding year (1999).

According to Vaz, all RIGI schools accord great importance to teacher development and training. “To ensure that high-quality education is delivered in our classrooms, we provide our teach-ers ample opportunities to participate in workshops, seminars, conferences and team building exercises organised by the Ryan Group’s central teacher training cell. The play-way method of teaching is followed in pre and primary school, and case studies, seminars and research  included in secondary school pedago-gies. Moreover despite pressing dem-and for admissions, we have maintained a healthy teacher-student ratio of 1:27,” says Vaz.

Like its 115 sister schools countrywide, RIS-K offers quality academic and sports infrastructure. The school’s three-acre compact campus houses 75 classrooms, an 800-seats auditorium, a well-equipped computer lab, science laboratories and a toys and music room for pre-primary students. The library offers access to over 3,000  volumes and subscription to 11 journals. Sports facilities include a full-size football field, basketball and tennis courts, swimming pool and cycling arena. Specialised coaching by profes-sional sportspersons is offered in chess, rifle shooting, throw-ball, swimming and carom.

In accordance with well-established RIGI traditions, the RIS-K management also places strong emphasis on co-curricular education — music, dance, theatre, elocution, art and crafts. Every year the Ryan Group stages an International Children’s Festival of Performing Arts (ICFPA) and an Indian Model United Nations conference which attract students from across India and abroad. Last year RIS-K was selected to conduct ICFPA, an event which drew 30,000 students from as far afield as Croatia, Australia, Turkey, South Africa and the UK. In addition, since 2005 RIS-K has sent a student delegation to the Future World Leaders Summit, organised by Presidential Classroom (a non-profit civic education organisation), and held annually in July in Washington D.C, USA.

Responding to parental demand for internationally benchmarked secondary education, in 2006 RIS-K introduced the IGCSE curri-culum of the Cambridge International Examination (CIE) board, UK. Three years later in 2008, to cope with rising demand for admissions, the international section was hived off to form the Ryan Global School with its own dedicated wing on the RIS-K campus. Currently 70 students are enroled in Ryan Global School, and in the recently concluded IGCSE (class XII) exam, student Anindit Karmarkar was awarded the highest marks in maths worldwide.

“We pride ourselves on our individual attention to children for the complete development of their potential. In all our schools we are driven by the goal of continuous improvement, and are constantly updating teaching-learning pedagogies besides exposing our students to a range of extra-curricular activities. For our Khargar school we have finalised plans to develop infrastructure comparable with the new Ryan Global School and to introduce intensive career-counseling progra-mmes for class XII students,” says Mme Grace Pinto, managing director of RIGI, who was recently co-opted into the prestigious United States-India Business Council Education Initiative, launched in June to strengthen academic linkages between both countries.

With the RIGI management entirely committed to delivering a holistic school experience combining academic and co-curricular education, RIS-Khargar is all set to provide world class K-12 education to residents of this distant suburb of India’s commercial capital.

Swati Roy (Mumbai)