Budding K-12 revolution

During the first decade of the new millennium, a growing number of risk-taking entrepreneurs with commitment to education have boldly stepped forward to promote and develop globally-benchmarked K-12 schools in the North-east With parents, households and village and tribal communities in the highly literate states of North-east India well aware of the critical importance of primary and secondary education, the eight states of the region boast a large number of quality private and government schools. Moreover with Protestant and Catholic Christian missionaries having been active for well over a century in the region and the leading states of Assam and Meghalaya (the focus areas of this EducationWorld investigative feature) in particular, even government schools tend to be well ahead of  their counterparts in most states of mainland India. The quaint stereotypical image of noble yet ignorant tribals, which even academics in the educationally backward BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states and peninsular India entertain of the North-east, is date-expired. Although proud of their native and tribal tradition and cultures, the region™s overwhelming majority of youth are literate and over 50 percent English literate. Nevertheless because higher education has traditionally been neglected in the North-eastern states until very recently, resulting in a shortage of well-trained educators, and teachers from mainland states reluctant to migrate to this ˜foreign™ region plagued by deep-rooted law and order problems, the top schools in the region compare unfavourably with the best in mainland India. Until the early years of the new millennium when the Assam Valley School (AVS, estb. 1995) was promoted and developed into a Top 10 ranked co-ed boarding school during the past decade, it was rare for children from mainland states to be sent to schools in the region. The furthest north-east that upper middle and elite households were prepared to send their children to was Darjeeling which boasts the famous boarding schools of St. Paul™s, St. Joseph™s and Loreto Girls. But during the first decade of the new millennium, a growing number of risk-taking entrepreneurs with commitment to education have boldly stepped forward to promote and develop high-quality, globally benchmarked primary-secondary schools in the North-east. For instance, the Assam Valley, Balipara, Miles Bronson, Royal Global and GEMS NPS International (all Guwahati) schools are routinely ranked among the country™s Top 25 in their various categories (day, day-cum-boarding, legacy boarding, and international etc) in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings. Moreover there are several other low-profile schools in Assam and Meghalaya which would be ranked if they projected a sufficiently high profile to attract the attention of sample respondents in the eastern region. FOR INSTANCE, a k-12 school which has earned an excellent reputation in Guwahati, but not beyond, is the CBSE-affiliated, co-ed Faculty Higher Secondary School (estb. 1982). Sited on an idyllic 20-acre campus on the banks of the river Brahmaputra in north Guwahati, it has an aggregate enrollment of 1,400 students mentored by 70 faculty. With a built-up area of 70,000 sq. ft, the school is equipped with excellent…