India’s best co-ed boarding schools 2014

A good augury for the future of gender relations in Indian society which has acquired a globally notorious reputation for gender atrocities, is that the great majority of post-liberalisation boarding schools are co-educational A beneficial legacy of almost 200 years of British raj in India which has survived the test of time, are the few hundred boarding schools, some of whom boast their lineage and traditions stretching over two centuries. And if India™s legacy boarding schools have endured despite the global post-World War II ” especially American ” trend  of sending children to primary-secondary day schools, it™s because these boys, girls and co-ed boarding schools have adapted to the new temper and times of post-independence India and metamorphosed into excellent providers of holistic education with a balanced emphasis on scholastics, performing arts and sports education. Moreover, with India™s overcrowded 7,900 towns and cities transforming into chaotic, pollution-intensive sink-holes, traditional boarding schools usually sited in scenic hill stations or carefully selected pollution-free environments, and generally more affordable than new genre international schools, are beginning to find favour once again with the country™s fast-expanding  middle class. A good augury for the future of improved gender relations in Indian society, which with incremental neglect and lumpenisation of K-12 education has acquired a globally notorious reputation for gender atrocities, is that the great majority of post-liberalisation boarding schools are co-educational. With single-sex boarding schools gradually becoming unfashionable and boys and girls residing, learning and playing in egalitarian education institutions, there™s a strong likelihood that they will develop sentiments of  gender sensitivity and mutual respect in their formative years. Be that as it may, in the largest segment of traditional/legacy boarding schools, there has been a change in seating arrangements at the top table. The  four-year reign of the alternative/new age Rishi Valley School, Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh), founded by education savant J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) in 1931, as India™s most preferred co-ed boarding school, has ended. Ironically, the usurper is another  recent vintage KFI (Krishnamurti Foundation of India)-supported  primary-secondary, viz, Sahyadri School, Rajgurunagar, 70 km from Pune, Maharashtra.  These two new-age wholly residential KFI schools have pushed the vintage Lawrence School, Sanawar (estb. 1847) ranked # 2  in 2013 to a joint #3 with yet another new age primary-secondary, the Rajghat Besant School, Varanasi. Further down, the Chinmaya International School, Coimbatore (#14) has pushed the Assam Valley School, Balipara ” Eastern India™s #1 co-ed boarding school ” to #5, a ranking it shares with the Bangalore-based Jain International Residential School. The surprising emergence of the low-profile CISCE-affiliated Sahyadri School (estb. 1995) as the #1 co-ed boarding school is to a significant extent attributable to the transfer of Dr. Shailesh Shirali, principal of the Rishi Valley School (RVS) for over two decades, to take charge at Sahyadri in 2012. Quite obviously, Shirali has implemented the best practices which transformed Rishi Valley into the country™s most preferred boarding school, in his new charge. œAs you are well aware, in KFI-supported schools we don™t attach much importance to rankings…