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.