Although it may not be immediately apparent, a mountain of effort, time, money and cerebration is invested in the compilation, aggregation, analysis and publication of the EducationWorld-C fore annual league tables of India’s most respected schools. The process begins in May with the editors of this publication aided by our correspondents and associates compiling a master list of 400 well-known day, traditional/legacy boarding and new genre international primary-secondary schools countrywide. This master list is forwarded to the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore), a market research firm (estb.2000) which has developed excellent field data collection expertise and produces business school and collegiate league tables for several national publications including the Hindustan Times, Mint and Outlook, among others.
To conduct this year’s survey, after refining the master list, over 100 C fore field researchers fanned out across 16 cities and education hubs (Dehradun, Darjeeling) soliciting the opinions of 2,044 fees-paying SECA (socio economic category A based upon education and occupation) parents, teachers, principals and independent educationists, who constituted the sample respondents base, about schools in their region (north, south, west and east). Respondents were asked to rate schools on a scale of 1-100 across 13 parameters of holistic education excellence including academic reputation, co-curricular activities, sports education etc. On the vitally important parameter of faculty competence, they were asked to rate schools on a scale of 1-200. The ratings/scores thus awarded by the sample respondents were aggregated to separately rank day, boarding and international schools inter se.
The unprecedented cooperation and enthusiasm experienced by C fore field researchers and your editors while writing the highlights and analysis of this year’s survey seems to indicate that the non-cooperation and resentment we encountered while conducting the EW-C fore school surveys in the past few years, is history. Parents, teachers and principals seem to have accepted that the EW annual surveys serve the useful purpose of providing valuable feedback relating to public perception of the country’s best schools. Commendably, there’s growing awareness within the academic community as well that institutional reputations can — and should — be built to attract the brightest students, best teachers, alumni and public endowments and societal goodwill.
This year’s league tables of India’s most respected day, boarding and international schools indicate a distinct shift in the mood of the informed public in favour of alternate-style education. All schools offering broad-based education with special focus on environmental education and spiritual development, have risen in public esteem. There’s a message to all principals and educationists in this trend.
A last word: the EW-C fore league tables offer the broad opinion of an informed public relating to India’s best schools. But league tables are not facts and hard evidence-based gospel. The objective of publishing and proclaiming the EW-C fore league tables annually is to encourage healthy competition and aspiration, so that India’s most respected schools improve continuously and serve as benchmark institutions for 1.26 million schools countrywide not included in the survey, to strive for inclusion.
