To enable access to students from India’s geographically huge states, 61 well-reputed day schools have also invested in residential facilities for out-of-town students. These schools are rated and ranked separately this year
Disaggregation and subdivision of the unwieldy league table of the country’s most well-known day schools into several rational categories has enabled a number of high-performing schools which were lost in the lengthy composite league table to move into the national limelight. To enable access to students from across India’s geographically huge states, if not from across the country, 61 well-reputed predominantly day schools have also invested in const-ructing and/or maintaining residential facilities for out-of-town students. Your editors believe that such institutions constitute a unique category and need to be rated and ranked separately.
This subdivision of the day schools master list of last year has most spectacularly benefited The Valley School, Bangalore, awarded the high-est aggregate score (1308) of all day schools by respondents of the C fore survey. Daly College, Indore; a clutch of DPS schools in Delhi NCR ( R.K. Puram, Dwarka, Mathura Road, Vasant Kunj and Noida); Modern School, Barakhamba Road (Delhi); Centre for Learning, Bangalore; Pallikoodam School, Kottayam (Kerala); Sai International, Bhubaneswar (Odisha) and Greenwood High, Bangalore, make it to the Top 10 table of the newly created category of India’s 61 most reputed day-cum-boarding schools.
Subdivision has also vaulted several other recently-promoted schools into the national limelight. Among them: DPS, Noida (#46 to 10); Ebenezer International, Bangalore (45-12); Emerald Heights International (119-13); Royal Global, Guwahati (35-14) and St. Peters, Kochi (62-18). Similarly, all the way down the day-cum-boarding sch-ools league table, a host of hitherto obscure day schools which are highly reputed in states and cities have received national acknowledgement and recognition.
“The subdivision of day schools into four categories is a good idea for ease of comparison. We have no objection to it because quite frankly in the Valley School, it’s not our philosophy to encourage competition, so high ratings and rankings don’t really matter. However the excellent rankings given by respondents to KFI (Krishnamurti Foundation of India) schools in the latest survey is an encouraging sign that parents and teacher communities have begun to assess education excellence in a radically different way. In the Valley School, we don’t prescribe textbooks or exams until class VIII. This is to encourage children to learn at their own pace and interest, so they develop love of learning. Our emphasis is on harmonious and cooperative learning without head-to-head competition. Therefore the high ratings we have received on the parameters of special needs education, life skills and conflict management, and parental involvement give us particular satisfaction,” says S. Jayaram, a former banker who switched tracks and signed up with the Krishnamurti Foundation, Chennai in 1989, served in three of its schools before being appointed headmaster and principal of the CISCE-affiliated Valley School, Bangalore (estb. 1978) in 2008, which has 370 students and 80 teachers on its muster rolls.
On the other hand, the indefatigable Bijoy Sahoo, a former practising chart-ered and cost accountant who quit the profession in the early years of the new millennium to focus his attention on “the nation-building activity of education, and especially to make world class K-12 education available to the neglected children of Odisha” to which end he promoted the state-of-the-art Sai International School in 2008 with a cumulative investment of Rs.50 crore, is fully supportive of the new rating and ranking system devised by Education-World and C fore. “It’s a format I support absolutely because the challenges of managing co-ed schools are subst-antially different from managing single sex schools. In our case we are also a day-cum-boarding school. Therefore for meaningful comparison, we need to be compared with peer institutions. This year’s league table which ranks Sai International among the country’s Top 10 day-cum-boarding schools and #1 in Odisha and Bhubaneswar, more accurately reflects the massive, sust-ained effort we have invested in developing this school,” says Sahoo. Currently, the CBSE-affiliated Sai International has an aggregate enrol-ment of 2,700 boys and girls, of whom 500 are boarders.
Another educationist who endorses the subdivision of EW league tables into discrete categories is Arup Mukhopadhyay, the highly-experienced principal of the mint new Royal Global School, Guwahati (Assam) promoted with an estimated investment of Rs.250 crore, which admitted its first batch of students in April 2012. Within a year of going on stream, this high-end CBSE-affiliated co-ed school whose tuition fees range between Rs.3-4 lakh per year, has attracted 874 students — mainly from the seven sister states of north-east India — of whom 302 reside on campus.
“The division of the long list of day schools into four distinct categories is fair and rational. This has narrowed the search for parents looking for the type of school they want for their children. Subdivision has also given national visibility to schools highly regarded in smaller states and non-metro cities. I am very pleased that within a year of starting operations, Royal Global has been ranked #14 nationally. It must be a record,” says Mukhopadhyay whose vast experience acquired as a teacher and administrator in several top-ranked schools (Mirambika, Delhi, Rishi Valley Chittoor, Manav Kendra Gyan, Baroda, Bikas Vidyalaya, Ranchi), and six years as the UNDP-appointed controller of examinations in the Maldives, has quite obviously rubbed off on this new school which has so quickly received the approbation of 828 eastern region respondents who have catapulted it into the national league table.
To see India's Top Day-cum-Boarding Schools visit
http://www.educationworld.in/rank-school/all-cities/day-school/day-cum-boarding/2013.html