In pursuit of excellence and continuous improvement which we preach to all education institutions in the national interest, the eagerly anticipated annual EducationWorld India School Rankings are also being continuously improved and upgraded to reflect the innovations and effort that managements, principals and teachers of the country’s best primary-secondary schools are investing in institutional development and raising teaching-learning standards.
Therefore this year, not only is the nationwide database of sample respondents at 5,779, significantly greater than in 2012 (3,070), but the league tables of yesteryear have been disaggregated and subdivided into several sub-categories to enable fair comparison between schools of different character and composition. Thus last year’s national league table of day schools which ranked all day schools together, has been subdivided into co-ed, all-girls, all-boys and day-cum-boarding schools. Likewise the league table of traditional or legacy boarding schools has been subdivided into all-boys, all-girls and co-ed institutions, and international schools into day, day-cum-boarding and wholly residential sub-categories.
This new rating and ranking format which we believe aggregates schools on separate but level planes for purposes of comparison and evaluation, hasn’t been universally welcomed. However the majority opinion is that subdivision of hold-all league tables into discrete sub-categories is not only more rational, but also makes school selection easier for parents/students, while raising the national profile of excellent schools which tended to get lost in lengthy all-inclusive league tables.
A frequently aired criticism of the EW annual league tables is that they are entirely perceptual, even if the sample respondents are well-informed individuals. In the cover story narrative, we have addressed this issue. However this year, thanks to Prashant Bhattacharji, a Hyderabad-based software data analyst and engineer who has put disparate bits of published information together, we are able to publish several factual league tables of schools whose students topped the ISC (class XII) exam of the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE). Unfortunately Vineet Joshi, chairman of the rival Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), declined to furnish similar information about schools affiliated with CBSE on grounds of “policy”, unpersuaded by the argument that board exam results are routinely published and celebrated in most countries around the world.
A mountain of labour has been invested by our field research agency partner C fore and the editorial staff of EducationWorld to compile, cross-check and finalise the vast data — unprecedented in the annals of news publishing — presented in our league tables. The publication of this issue containing the EW India School Rankings 2013 will be followed by the EW India School Awards 2013 Nite in New Delhi on September 14. Although some informed monitors of Indian education disparage such celebration, we are unapologetic about commemorating and extolling schools making determined efforts to compete with the best worldwide. We believe that development of institutional pride within all of India’s 1.40 million schools is the prerequisite of national development.
