Unsurprisingly, the great majority of India’s 1.40 million primary-secondary education institutions are day schools. Of them, schools promoted and managed by the Central, state and local governments add up to 1.20 million with composite private schools numbering 80,000 (200,000 according to Union HRD ministry which classifies primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary schools as separate units).
Yet it’s pertinent to note that although private schools number a mere 15 percent of all primary-secondaries countrywide, they host over 40 percent (92 million) of the 230 million children in schools across the country at the start of the academic year. If to this disproportionate number in private education we add the estimated 60 million children studying in 300,000 unrecognised private budget schools which have mushroomed in urban slums and educationally deprived rural areas in the country, the aggregate enrolment in private schools exceeds the number of children in government schools.
This paradox has a simple explanation. Teaching-learning standards and processes in government schools — especially state and local government schools defined by crumbling infrastructure, multigrade classrooms, chronic teacher absenteeism, neglect of English, and abysmal learning outcomes — fall so short of even minimum standards that parents from bottom-of-the-pyramid households prefer to send their children to fees-levying private rather than free-of-charge government schools, despite the latter providing free mid-day meals apart from textbooks and uniforms.
Therefore given that the annual EW league tables rate and rank a mere 906 sufficiently reputable schools nationwide, it’s not surprising that the overwhelming majority of them are private primary-secondaries. Nevertheless, to acknowledge and encourage the small minority of high-performing government schools, for the first time, the country’s best government schools are separately rated and ranked in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2014.
Moreover as in 2013, to enable fair and easy comparison, this year as well, day schools have been divided into co-ed, all-boys, all-girls and day-cum-boarding school categories, and rated and ranked separately. This not only enables more schools to qualify for top honours, it also makes the task of selecting schools of their choice easier for parents and teachers.