In this edition, we present Part II of EWISR 2021-22 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
Conceptualised and launched in 2007, the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) survey has since evolved into the world’s largest primary-secondary schools ratings and ranking initiative. Prior to the introduction of EWISR, schools ranking surveys abroad used to rank schools under one solitary parameter — academic excellence — measured by way of students’ average scores in school-leaving exams conducted by government or respected examination boards such as Cambridge International (UK), International Baccalaureate (Europe), SAT and College Board (USA) and gaokao (China).
Ab initio, we believed — and continue to believe — that education should be a holistic, balanced and enjoyable learning experience for children. Therefore every year, EWISR rates India’s most well-reputed primary-secondary schools on 14 parameters of excellence, including teacher welfare and development, teacher competence, infrastructure, co-curricular and sports education, parental involvement, academic reputation, curriculum and pedagogy, internationalism, among several other parameters. In this pandemic year 2021-22, we have added two important parameters for assessing institutional excellence, viz, online education effectiveness, and mental and emotional well-being services provided by school managements.
For this annual exercise, over 11,000 sample respondents including eminent educators, principals, teachers, parents and senior school students are interviewed by over 100 field personnel of our reliable partner, the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), the well-known nationally reputed market research and opinion polls company. They are asked to rate schools in their zones/region under each parameter on a scale of 1-100 with the critical parameter of teacher competence accorded double weightage. The scores awarded to schools under each parameter by the sample respondents are totalled and schools are ranked nationally, in states and cities.
The objective of this annual exercise is to enable parents to choose the most convenient and aptitudinally suitable school for their children. To facilitate choice of this life-shaping institution, schools are ranked in 14 separate and distinct categories such as co-ed day, day-cum-boarding, all-boys and exclusively girls schools, legacy boarding co-ed, boys and girls schools and international schools (day, day-cum-boarding and fully residential). This is to avoid falling into the trap of making apples and oranges type comparisons.
As mentioned above over the past 14 years since the annual EWISR was somewhat tentatively launched, it has evolved into the world’s largest primary-secondary schools ranking survey that evaluates the relative strengths and weaknesses of over 3,000 most reputed schools in India. Last month (November) in our 280-pages, 22nd Anniversary issue, we presented Part I of EWISR 2021-22 featuring comprehensive league tables rating and ranking Day (co-ed, all-boys and girls), Day-cum-boarding, Government (day and boarding) and Special Needs schools.
Now in Part II of EWISR 2021-22, we present detailed league tables rating India’s best Boarding (co-ed, all-girls and boys) schools — some of them of over 150 years vintage and globally admired — and International (day, day-cum-boarding and fully residential) schools affiliated with offshore international examination boards. In addition, we also present league tables rating and ranking the country’s most-reputed Budget Private Schools and pre-primaries, most of which are still shuttered for fear of youngest children being infected by the dread Coronavirus.
Although the prime purpose of the annual EWISR is to enable parents to choose wisely the most suitable primary-secondary school for their children, EWISR has also proved very useful for institutional managements. It provides them with an independent, objective image of their public profile, enabling them to conduct SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses and improve under parameters in which they receive low scores. Self-evidently, high-ranked schools attract the best teachers and brightest students.
Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably in a society that doesn’t value innovation and achievement, despite the annual EWISR highlighting the critical importance of providing children a balanced, transformative education experience to realise their potential, influential academics tend to be sceptical, if not indifferent. Several respected academics have criticised EWISR for being a perceptions- based K-12 institutions survey rather than a detailed audit. Curiously, they are unmindful of the reality that an audit study of 1.5 million schools countrywide would be ruinously expensive and time consuming.
Be that as it may, Premchand Palety, an alum of the highly-ranked Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and Fore School of Management, Delhi, who began his career in ORG, India’s pioneer retail market research company and later went solo as promoter-director of C fore (estb.2000), arguably the country’s most respected market research and opinion polls company (clients: Congress party, Nestle, Mint among others) which has conducted the annual EWISR since 2008, offers a spirited defence of the EWISR survey methodology.
“Although EWISR is primarily a perceptions- based survey, it’s important to note that the perceptions are not of randomly selected lay people, but of educationists, principals, teachers, fees-paying parents and senior students — individuals intimately connected with K-12 education on a day-to-day basis and well-aware of the best schools in their neighbourhoods. This year, scores awarded under the crucial parameter of ‘teacher competence’ include grades awarded to teachers in a special online test administered by Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA), the well-known teacher development and certification company. However, less than 15 percent of the 3,000 schools included in EWISR 2021-22 wrote the CENTA test. In the prevailing circumstances, the EWISR survey methodology is the best available option. These annual surveys are pragmatic and their great merit is that we have ideated over a dozen benchmarks for holistic school education, and generated extensive nationwide awareness of the vital importance of well-rounded, balanced education,” says Palety.
Palety’s defence of the annual EWISR which during the past 14 years since it was instituted has aroused huge response within the K-12 education stakeholders community — the EWISR Awards function staged annually at the Leela, Gurugram, Delhi NCR attracts over 1,000 of the country’s most reputed K-12 education leaders — is seconded by Rohit Mohindra, director of Mumbai-based Raj Mohindra Consultants, one of the country’s most respected education consultancy firms.
“The annual EWISR surveys have conferred a huge public benefit by generating healthy competition between schools to strive for continuous improvement under 14 parameters of primary-secondary education excellence. Every school including the top-ranked has scope to improve under one parameter or another. Criticism of the perceptions-based methodology of EWISR is unwarranted. Facts and data-based methodology is impossible in a large universe of 1.5 million schools. The rankings methodologies utilised for evaluating a few thousand universities cannot be used to rate and rank schools operating in a much larger universe,” says Mohindra, whose firm was instrumental in establishing India’s first International Baccalaureate (Geneva)-affiliated school — the Mahindra United World College, Pune (estb.1999) — and whose client list includes several nationally top-ranked schools.
Against this backdrop, in the concluding Part II of EWISR 2021-22, we present detailed league tables rating India’s most admired legacy Boarding schools (co-ed, all-girls and boys); International (day, day-cum-boarding and fully residential) schools affiliated with offshore international examination boards; Budget Private schools and pre-primaries.
Moreover, in the year of the Covid pandemic during which all schools countrywide were under government imposed lockdown for over 60 weeks, two new parameters — ‘online education effectiveness’ (maximum score: 150) and ‘mental and emotional well-being services’ — have been added replacing ‘pastoral care’ and ‘sports education’.
