In this edition, we present Part II of EWISR 2020-21 featuring league tables rating and ranking the country’s most reputed Boarding Schools (co-ed, girls and boys), International Schools (day, day-cum-boarding and fully residential) and also the most respected Budget Private Schools – Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen

The ill-wind of the Coronavirus global pandemic which has infected 50 million people and killed 1.26 million around the world including 9.5 million and 138,000 in India (December 1) forced postponement of our annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) league tables, published in September for the past 13 years, to November/December. Moreover, with the number of schools sufficiently well-known to be included in EWISR 2020-21 having risen to almost 2,500, we’ve had to spread the rankings league tables over two editions. In our landmark 21st anniversary issue of last month (November), we published city, state and national league tables of Day Schools (co-ed, day-cum-boarding, boys and girls); and well-reputed Government (day and boarding) and Special Needs Schools.

In this issue, we present Part II of EWISR 2020-21 featuring league tables rating and ranking the country’s most reputed Boarding Schools (co-ed, girls and boys) and International Schools (day, day-cum-boarding and fully residential). In addition, in this issue, we have amalgamated the league tables of the country’s 168 most respected Budget Private Schools and 179 Preschools. In non-pandemic times, BPS and preschools merited separate and more elaborate league tables and commentary. Therefore, this issue of EducationWorld is an all-inclusive bumper tome.

In this connection, it’s noteworthy that over the past decade, EWISR has established an unchallenged reputation as the world’s largest and most detailed annual primary-secondary schools ranking project. To the extent, that demand for inclusion has also emanated from self-respecting schools in neighbouring Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UAE and Nepal. Therefore for the past two years, we have been publishing expert jury rankings of Top 10 schools in neighbouring countries. This year too, the best-regarded schools in these countries are ranked by specially constituted juries of education experts with deep knowledge of their K-12 education systems.

Although the pandemic necessitated postponement of EWISR 2020-21, Premchand Palety, promoter-director of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (estb.2000) which has partnered with us to conceptualise and design the uniquely diverse and broad-based EWISR ab initio, is confident that the 2020-21 league tables are “robust and uncompromising” and “indeed an improvement” over past C fore-EW surveys.

“As usual, our sample respondents’ database for this year’s survey comprised fees-paying parents in the SEC (socio-economic category) ‘A’, teachers, principals, educationists and senior school students aggregating 11,368 individuals in 28 cities and towns countrywide. These sample respondents were interviewed over four months by 118 C fore field personnel who persuaded them to award schools in their regions — east, west, south and north — with which they are more familiar, scores under 14 parameters of K-12 education excellence including academic reputation, competence of teachers, co-curricular education, sports education, infrastructure, curriculum and pedagogy, leadership etc. They also interviewed parents in the SEC ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ categories to rate the best budget private schools separately. The score awarded to schools under each parameter by sample respondents were totaled to arrive at every school’s national, state and city rankings,” says Palety.

Moreover, this year in a departure from previous practice, after conducting a prior mini-survey of parents, C fore has assigned varying weights to some parameters while retaining the highest weightage (200) for teacher competence. Hitherto, all parameters (except teacher competence) were given equal weightage (100).

“I am confident the EWISR 2020-21 is an unprecedentedly robust and high-integrity survey which is truly reflective of informed public opinion,” says Palety, an alum of Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and FORE B-school, Delhi, who worked with ORG, India’s pioneer retail market research firm for over a decade prior to promoting C fore in the new millennium. C fore’s clientele includes the Congress party, Nestle and Hindustan Times.

Undoubtedly, despite the constraints of conducting this year’s survey during Covid times, C fore’s field staff pulled out all stops to ensure that EWISR 2020-21 is the most thorough primary-secondary schools ranking survey worldwide. In the pages following, we present comprehensive league tables rating and ranking the country’s most respected legacy Boarding Schools (co-ed day, all-boys and all-girls), International Schools (day, day-cum-boarding and residential) and Budget Private Schools (BPS) in 73 cities/towns.

All told, in our November and December issues, EWISR 2020-21 rates and ranks over 2,500 Day, Boarding and International schools in an unprecedented 311 cities and towns across India.

We believe the comprehensive EWISR league tables set out in this edition will enable parents to choose the most suitable Boarding, International, and BPS schools for their children, and also provide institutional managements insights into ways and means to continuously raise teaching-learning standards for the greater good of community and country.

Also read: EW India School rankings 2020-21 (Part 1)