Premier co-ed day-cum-boarding schools

With The Valley School, Bangalore having been moved to the day schools category, there’s been a rearrangement at the Top 5 table with Daly College, Indore retaining its #1 ranking

Co-ed day-cum boarding schools, i.e, day schools which also host a substantial number of boys and girls as boarders, constitute a special category in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) surveys. Unlike day schools simpliciter which attract local students, co-ed day-cum-boarding schools tend to pitch themselves higher to invite students from all parts of the country, and often from abroad. Therefore in terms of infrastructure provision, co-curricular and sports education and student care and services, as also student body diversity, they tend to offer more holistic education and better facilities.

Indeed their managements argue that they offer the best of both worlds. And since they add up to a large number countrywide and can’t be compared with pure-play day or boarding schools, they are ranked separately in the national and international categories.

Ever since 2013 when the EWISR league tables, introduced for the first time in Indian history in 2007, were segregated to enable rational evaluation and comparison of primary-secondary schools inter se, the co-ed day-cum-boarding schools league table has been dominated by the vintage Daly College, Indore, The Valley School, Bangalore, DPS, R.K. Puram, Delhi and the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Delhi. However this year the Krishnamurti Foundation (Chennai)-promoted The Valley School, Bangalore, has been moved to the day schools category because it has almost closed down its residential facilities. Therefore, Daly College has easily topped the EWISR 2015 league table in this category.

Sumer Singh, an experienced educationist who taught in several schools in Britain including Gordonstoun, and the Atlantic United World College, Wales, before returning to India as principal of Lawrence, Sanawar (1988-95), prior to being appointed principal of Daly College (DC, estb.1882) in 2003, welcomes the annual EWISR surveys for having created a “positive environment” for K-12 education countrywide.

“School managements across the country are consciously striving to better their scores across all the well-chosen parameters of the annual EWISR and there’s great satisfaction within the teacher and student communities when their ratings and rankings improve. In DC, we are specially inspired by our top ratings under the parameters of life skills and conflict management, infrastructure provision, pastoral care, internationalism and community service, and our high scores for sports education and teachers’ competence and commitment. All these are high-priority focus areas for us,” says Singh. Currently, the CBSE-affiliated DC, which is also a member of Round Square, London and the exclusive IPSC (Indian Public Schools Conference), has 1,857 students including 552 boarders, and 151 teachers plus 70 sports and 22 cultural activities teachers.

Similarly, Dr. D.R. Saini, an economics and physical education alumnus of Panjab University who signed up as a teacher at Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, Delhi (DPSRKP, estb. 1972) in 1978 and was appointed principal of this highly-respected pioneer DPS school which has a massive complement of 7,473 students, including 3,364 girl students and 412 boarders, is highly appreciative of the annual EWISR initiative. “Even if we are not happy with the ranking of our school, there’s no doubt that the annual EWISR delivers a fair verdict. The entire academic community is indebted to EducationWorld for introducing friendly and harmonious competition in school education,” says Saini who is specially enthused by the #1 rating of DPSRKP under the “related parameters” of competence and commitment of teachers and academic reputation. “Over 775 of our school-leavers are currently studying in top-ranked universities around the world with 65 percent of them awarded handsome scholarships. I am confident most of them will return to India to serve the country,” says Saini.

However, despite the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Delhi (MSB, estb. 1920) being ranked #1 under the parameters of sports education, co-curricular education and leadership/management quality, and having improved its national ranking by a notch to #3 this year, Dr. Vijay Datta is “less than satisfied” by MSB’s ranking.

“Our academic performance in the CBSE class XII exams has improved by an average 7 percent which is unprecedented in the long history of the school, and the performance of our students, who play several sports at the national level, has been outstanding. Moreover, we have introduced an equestrian programme recently and have begun the process of transforming MSB into a techno-savvy, ICT-enabled school. Given this dramatic turnaround and radical image change of the school, I expected a higher ranking this year,” says Datta, a biology and engineering postgrad of Rajasthan University who was awarded a “genuine” doctorate in life skills and emotional intelligence management by the Regional Institute of Education, Ajmer, and taught at the blue-chip Mayo College (1991-2011) and Army School, Dagshai (2011-14) prior to being appointed principal of MSB last year.

The Top 5 seating in the league table of the country’s top day-cum-boarding schools is completed by DPS, Dwarka, and the consistently rising Greenwood High, Bangalore, with both advancing a notch. They are followed by the relatively new Bhubaneswar-based Sai International School (SAIS, estb. 2008) which has shaken up education in eastern India and the fast-developing state of Odisha (pop. 44 million) in particular, by introducing internationally benchmarked K-12 education to this hitherto socio-economically backward state known for its neglected tribal population and widespread malnourishment.

“I am delighted that the educationally-aware respondents of EWISR 2015 have recognised the hard work of SAIS teachers and students. Our CBSE class XII exam results with an average of 88 percent are among the best countrywide and the school’s excellent ratings on the parameters of academic reputation and individual attention to students is proof that our new in-house-devised Sai Academic Management system which continuously tracks the academic performance of every child and remedies weak performance under a teacher mentor scheme, is working well. Moreover, SAIS has very active international teacher and student exchange programmes and recently we promoted Sai Angan, perhaps the largest pre-primary school in India. We are satisfied with our progress on all fronts including our steady rise in the annual EWISR surveys,” says Dr. Bijoy K. Sahoo, formerly a successful chartered accountant who switched his attention to education — “a higher priority in Odisha” — in the new millennium. Currently this CBSE and CBSE(I)-affiliated school has 3,563 students including 1,492 girls and 521 boarders on its muster rolls.

Further down the league table of co-ed day-cum-boarding schools, the impressive debut at #13 of the Summer Valley School, Dehradun (SVS, estb. 1994 as the Riverdale School and renamed in 2007) has “elated” Dr. Ashok Wasu, a highly qualified (commerce, law and education alum of Uttarakhand University) corporate professional who quit a promising career in ONGC — the country’s #1 (public sector) crude oil and gas exploration and production company — in response to “a higher calling”. In 1994 after a long stint (1979-92) with ONGC, with the backing of family and friends, Wasu took over the ailing Riverdale School, divided it into the Sun Valley (lower KG-class V) and the CISCE-affiliated class VI-XII Summer Valley School sited on a compact 3.5-acre campus in the heart of Dehradun.

“Academically, SVS has always been among the Top 3 schools in the state of Uttarakhand. However, thus far we have maintained a low-profile because we have been focused inwards in building the character and ethos of the Sun Valley and SVS schools. As a result, our academic standards are high, our faculty is excellent and in terms of discipline and students’ conduct, SVS is the #1 school in Dehradun and Uttarakhand. This is best reflected in the fact that we received 1,000 applications for the 120 vacancies we had at the start of the new academic year,” says Wasu, who recently promoted two new schools in Moradabad (UP) and Patiala (Punjab) modelled on SVS. “I am a serious and committed educationist,” he adds.

Further down the league table of the country’s premier co-ed day-cum-boarding schools, DPS, Guwahati and Royal Global School, Guwahati (#1 and 2 in Assam/Asom), Yadavindra Public School (#1 in Punjab) and Sehwag International School (#1 in Haryana) have substantially improved their national rankings.

To view EW India Day-cum-boarding Schools Rankings 2015 visit www.educationworld.in/rank-school/all-cities/day-school/day-cum-boarding/2015.html