Cover Story Contd.

India’s top 10 government schools

This year to make the EW India School Rankings more inclusive, separate tables rating and ranking the country’s Top 10 government day and boarding schools are presented 

The total number of schools promoted and/or managed by the Central, state and local governments across the country aggregate 1.20 million — constituting the overwhelming majority of India’s 1.40 million primary-secondary institutions. But the general condition of government schools — especially state and local government owned/managed primary-secondaries notorious for their crumbling infrastructure, lack of functional toilets, multi-grade teaching, chronic teacher absenteeism and rock-bottom learning outcomes — is so pathetic that despite fees-levying private aided and unaided schools constituting a mere 15 percent of the total, they host 40 percent of the country’s school-going children. If the estimated 60 million children who attend the country’s ‘unrecognised’ budget primary schools are added to the number of children in non-government schools, the majority of India’s children in primary-secondary education are being schooled in private institutions. 

Consequently, given the fact that the vast majority of middle class households (from whom the EW sample respondents are drawn) wouldn’t touch government schools with a barge pole, it’s unsurprising that only a few government schools — mainly from among the 1,090 Kendriya Vidyalayas and 596 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (rural boarding schools) promoted by the Central government for its employees — feature in the annual EW league tables of Top 10 government day and boarding schools. For instance, the Kendriya Vidyalaya, IIT-Madras has routinely been ranked among the Top 50 day schools of the country for several years. 
 
This year, to make the EW India School Rankings more inclusive and to encourage the managements of government-run schools to raise teaching-learning standards and learning outcomes, C fore field researchers also interviewed 1,000 parents from SEC (socio-economic category) B, C and D households to rate and rank government schools inter se. Therefore for the first time, separate tables rating and ranking the country’s Top 10 government day and boarding schools are presented hereunder. 
 
Interestingly, the Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, Nadakkavu, managed by the Kozhikode municipal council which hit the national headlines when it was fully refurbished under a unique public-private partnership with the Faizal and Shabana Foundation (see EW July), is ranked #5 in this year’s league table of government day schools.      

Cover Story Contd.

CBSE/CISCE Exams Top 100 schools

Responding to a frequent criticism that the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings were entirely based on perceptions, despite the recalcitrance of the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) to officially release data relating to the actual performance of affiliated schools in their (classes XII and X) board exams, with the help and cooperation of Prashant Bhattacharji, a Hyderabad-based software engineer and data analyst, last year we published a league table indicating the actual performance of Top 100 schools in CISCE’s class XII (ISC) examination held countrywide in March 2013. 

This year, we have gone one better despite the failure of CBSE to respond to an RTI notice to provide the actual performance data of schools affiliated with it. Once again drawing on Bhattacharji’s new technologies and data analytics expertise, we have included the class XII exam results (English plus best four subjects) of CBSE schools listed in the EW India School Rankings 2014 league tables.
 
“League tables detailing the factual results of schools in board exams are routinely published by exam boards abroad because they promote inter-school competition, give teachers due recognition when their students perform well, and enable parents to choose the best schools for their children. My technology background and experience enabled me to source data from multiple sources to compile tables detailing the actual performance of a large number of CBSE and CISCE schools, with some administrators personally submitting data to me in the public interest. While engaging in this exercise, I have discovered shocking statistical evidence of erratic scores manipulation by both these pan-India boards. This perhaps explains their reluctance to share data,” says Bhattacharji, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur who acquired valuable work experience in Lehman Bros, India and Microsoft, USA before returning to India in 2010. Currently a data scientist at InterviewStreet Pvt. Ltd, he also manages a website christened   ThelearningPoint.net. 
 
In this issue of EducationWorld, we have not only included the actual average performance of all schools (except state board-affiliated institutions) in an add-on column of the perceptual league tables, but also separately feature tables of the Top 100 CBSE and CISCE schools based on the results of all 1,823 CISCE and 5,346 (out of 8,600) CBSE schools. However, only schools which sent batches in excess of 70 to write the school-leaving exams have been included in the Top 100 rankings. For factual averages of other schools, please refer to the main league tables.