Nath Valley School, Aurangabad

NVS (estb. 1992) is the highest ranked co-ed day school in Maharashtra outside the highly industrialised cities of Mumbai and Pune in EWISR 2017-18 - DIPTA JOSHI

Established in 1992 as a lonely outpost of globally-benchmarked primary-secondary learning in the educationally neglected northern region of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state (pop. 112 million) — on a green 20-acre campus on the outskirts of Aurangabad (pop.2.4 million) which hosts the famous Ajanta and Ellora caves, the Nath Valley School (NVS) offers high-quality, holistic education to 1,350 students mentored by 90 teachers. 

In the recently published EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2017-18, the class I-XII NVS is ranked among the country’s Top 100 co-educational day schools, among the Top 50 in Maharashtra, and #1 in Aurangabad. Affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), this is the only school in the region conferred the International School Award of the British Council. 

Currently celebrating its silver jubilee year, NVS was promoted by respected industry leaders including Nandkishore Kagliwal, Rajendra Darda, Arvind Machhar, Pradeep Dhoot, Narendra Gupta and Kumud Bajaj under the aegis of the Aurangabad Vidya Mandir Trust to provide internationally benchmarked education to children of this historic city, which attracts 1 million tourists every year. Though predominantly a day school, NVS also offers board and lodging facilities for a small number of students from tier II and III towns — 63 boys and 22 girls. 

But if within a few years of its promotion NVS has established an enviable reputation in Aurangabad and its peripheries — Nath Valley has been awarded the highest aggregate score (1067) in Maharashtra outside the highly industrialised cities of Mumbai and Pune in EWISR 2017-18 — it's because it has been built from ground up by Ranjit Dass who took charge as founder-principal a quarter century ago. A postgraduate of the blue-chip St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and the globally top-ranked Oxford University (UK) where he read history and education management, Dass served as a teacher at Woodstock School, Mussoorie (Uttarakhand) — routinely top-ranked among international fully residential schools in the annual EW India School Rankings — for 12 years. 

Employing advanced rainwater harvesting, conservation and management techniques in this arid region of the state, he engineered the transformation of NVS into a green campus with globally-inspired infrastructure. “I believe the USP of NVS is the comprehensive education we offer, which combines academic rigour with co-curricular and sports education. Our CBSE board results are excellent with graduates admitted into the world’s best universities including Caltech, USA and Cambridge University, UK. Although a small-town school, we are nurturing students equal to the best in the world,” says Dass. 

Despite NVS’ focus on holistic education, academics is given top priority. NVS students invariably excel in CBSE’s class XII board exams. Of the 53 students who wrote the board’s 2017 school-leaving exam, 22 averaged more than 90 percent. Moreover, NVS students have won encomiums at the national level in the International English Olympiad, Microsoft Office specialist exam and National Talent Search Examination.

The impressive academic record of the school is the consequence of the NVS management providing a supportive scholastic infrastructure. All the school’s 80 classrooms are fully-wired and fitted with LCD screens. Other facilities include a well-stocked library housing 14,847 volumes, science laboratories, art, tech and media centres, a 1,400-seat amphitheatre and canteen catering to 1,500 daily. 

“Teaching-learning here is experiential with students encouraged to research concepts and projects that improve comprehension, summarisation and presentation abilities. Academically weak students are given remedial lessons by subject teachers who are highly qualified and experienced. Moreover, we regularly hold workshops to help teachers update their subject knowledge, pedagogies and practices,” says vice principal Sharda Gupta, an alumna of Pune University, who taught in the Agrasen Community and Cambridge International School, Abu Dhabi, prior to signing up with NVS in 1992. 

Inevitably, sports education is a major focus of the school with several indoor and outdoor activities on offer. The campus boasts two grounds for football and cricket, a 400 m athletics track, two outdoor basketball and tennis courts, a 7,000 sq. ft indoor sports complex housing basketball and badminton, tennis and squash courts, table tennis, carrom and chess rooms. Also on the school’s education menu are 33 clubs covering a wide range of co-curricular activities such as cookery, poetry, mathematics, robotics, art, calligraphy, Judo, French and German. Unsurprisingly at the start of the academic year in 2016, the ratio of admission applications to vacancies was 5:1.
With NVS firmly established as Aurangabad’s #1 primary-secondary school and among the Top 50 in Maharashtra, the management is concentrating on breaking new ground. Among its future plans is establishing a centre for innovation for students and teachers to collaborate on projects related to artificial intelligence. “An NVS alumnus who has a Ph D in robotics from UC Berkeley is helping us set up the centre, which we expect to be functional by June next year. Also on the agenda are a series of guest lectures delivered by well-known academic innovators, motivational speakers and technology experts,” says Dass, who was conferred the National Teachers Award in 2014.