For the first time in the past three years, Welham Girls, Dehradun ranked #1, has bested the formidable Mayo College Girls, Ajmer
Ranked #4 in the all-inclusive Top 45 league table of boarding schools and below Mayo Girls last year, Welham Girls School, Dehradun (estb. 1957) is ranked Indias #1 all-girls boarding school by a comfortable aggregate margin in the EW India School Rankings 2013. Bestowed highest ratings (within its category) on almost all parameters including faculty competence, academic reputation, sports education, life skills and conflict management education, and the newly introduced parameter of pastoral care, Welham Girls has risen high in the estimation of the 2,049 informed respon-dents who rated north Indias most high-profile schools.
Moreover, the CISCE-affiliated Welham Girls has justified its high academic reputation ranking with its 77 students topping the ISC class XII school-leaving examinations earlier this year with an average of 91.73 percent in English plus best-three subjects (see p.190). Mayo College Girls, Ajmer; Scindia Kanya, Gwalior; Ashok Hall Girls Residential School, Ranikhet, and Unison World School, Dehradun are ranked Indias Top 5 in the short league table of sufficiently well-known (low-profile institutions rated by less than 25 respondents are eliminated from the rankings) all-girls boarding schools.
Naturally, all of us in the school are thrilled that weve been ranked the countrys #1 girls boarding school for the first time. In the past few years we have doubled the time and effort invested in improving in-service training of our teachers, and Im gratified to note that this is reflected in Welham Girls #1 ratings under the parameters of teacher welfare and faculty comp-etence. We have developed several excellent teacher training modules which we freely share with neigbouring schools in Dehradun and beyond. Academically, we give equal weightage to science and humanities subjects and allow our girls the widest choice of subject combinations for the ICSE and ISC board exams. Therefore the top ranking under the parameter of academic reputation confirmed by actual ISC exam results published by EW, is enough proof that we are on the right track, says Jyotsna Brar, an English and education postgrad of Punjab Univer-sity who was appointed principal of Welham Girls in 2000.
Welham Girls top ranking in this years master league table is likely to prove especially satisfying because for the first time in three years it has been ranked above the formidable Mayo College Girls, Ajmer which had cons-istently outranked most boys schools including Mayo Boys in the inclusive league tables of the past years. Know-ledgeable monitors of K-12 education attribute this to the recent retirement of Mayo Girls long-serving principal Jameela Singh earlier this year. She is succeeded by Kanchan Khandke, hith-erto a senior teacher at Welham Girls.
Disaggregation and subdivision of boarding schools into all-boys, all-girls and co-ed institutions this year is welcomed by Nishi Mishra, principal of the all-girls residential Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior (SKV, estb. 1956), which as a consequence has improved its ranking from #21 last year in the composite league table to #3 in the girls boarding schools table. Since publication of the first EW India School Rankings, internally we have been comparing our ratings and rankings with other girls boarding schools. Its more rational to evaluate boys, girls and co-ed schools separately because the challenges of managing them differ. For instance, the new parameters of pastoral care, life skills and conflict management as also security, need to be given much greater emphasis in all-girls schools than in other types of residential schools, says Mishra, a history and education postgraduate of Allahabad University and former principal of the #7 ranked Vidya Devi Jindal School, Hisar (Haryana), who was appointed principal of SKV (525 students; 60 teachers) in 2010.
Quite clearly, as affirmed by the truncated league table of the countrys most respected all-girls boarding schools, single sex schools are losing popularity within the upwardly mobile middle class which still retains faith in away-from-home boarding schools. Nevertheless its pertinent to note that the bottom half of all-girls boarding schools league table of 2013 comprises several newly-promoted institutions. Among them Unison World School, Dehradun ranked #5, was promoted in 2007, and Ecole Globale International Girls School, Dehradun (#6) in 2012; Vidya Devi Jindal, Hisar (#7) in 1984; Mussoorie International School, Mussoorie, (#8) in 1984; Shah Satnam Ji Girls, Sirsa (#9) in 1994; Shigally Hill International, Dehradun (#10) in 2002 and Hopetown Girls, Dehradun (#11) in 1999.
Socially conservative households within Indias newly affluent middle class obviously continue to repose considerable faith in all-girls boarding schools which as testified by their parameter ratings and aggregate scores, are perceived to be as good as their all-boys and co-ed counterparts.
To see girls boarding schools league table visitt https://www.educationworld.in/rank-school/all-cities/boarding-school/girls/2013.html
