That the EducationWorld India School Rankings published every September is our most eagerly awaited issue and arouses great interest within the communities of parents, educators and students, is a welcome sign that awareness of the need to dispense well-rounded holistic education — rather than mere academic learning — has dawned upon primary-secondary school managements countrywide. Therefore to produce our biggest issue of the year, we have pulled out all the stops to present the most comprehensive schools ranking league ever. Indeed, I make bold to say that such detailed data relating to school education is not published in any other country worldwide.
Although the annual EW league tables rating and ranking the country’s most respected schools have been enthusiastically received since we began publishing them in 2007, in response to feedback from the public, we have willingly assumed the onus of continuously improving and upgrading them.
For instance responding to criticism that the initial league tables compared vastly different types of institutions such as boarding and day, and co-ed and single sex schools with each other, two years ago we began to rate and rank day, boarding and international schools separately. Further, even within these categories, schools were divided into ten sub-categories such as day, day-cum-boarding, all boys and all girls schools to avoid apples and oranges type of comparisons.
Similarly, in response to complaints that the EW league tables were entirely based on public perception, last year with the help of Prashant Bhattacharji, a Hyderabad-based education data aggregator and analyst, we published the average class XII school-leaving (ISC) exam scores of the Top 100 schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) — an unprecedented scoop. This year we have done several steps better. Again with Bhattacharji’s invaluable assistance, we feature the average scores of almost all schools affiliated with not only CISCE, but even primary-secondaries affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the largest pan-India school examinations board. This despite CBSE officials failing to respond to a notice issued by us under the Right to Information Act, 2005 to provide data related to the actual class XII exam scores of its affiliated schools, as is normative in all democratic countries. Therefore Bhattacharji was obliged to source the CBSE school-leaving exam scores from various information providers and the data may not be wholly accurate.
Lastly, a word of appreciation to our managing editor Summiya Yasmeen and her dedicated team of EW sub-editors and a special task force who have engineered the 120-page cover story comprising innumerable national, state, city and parameter league tables with explanatory commentary, featured in this issue. They had to work round the clock to make this year’s globally unprecedented schools ratings and ranking issue — which offers a rich mine of data and information to educators, parents and students — possible.
