India’s best co-ed-day-cum-boarding-schools-2015

With The Valley School, Bangalore having been moved to the day schools category, there™s been a rearrangement at the Top 5 table with Daly College, Indore retaining its #1 ranking Co-ed day-cum boarding schools, i.e, day schools which also host a substantial number of boys and girls as boarders, constitute a special category in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) surveys. Unlike day schools simpliciter which attract local students, co-ed day-cum-boarding schools tend to pitch themselves higher to invite students from all parts of the country, and often from abroad. Therefore in terms of infrastructure provision, co-curricular and sports education and student care and services, as also student body diversity, they tend to offer more holistic education and better facilities. Indeed their managements argue that they offer the best of both worlds. And since they add up to a large number countrywide and can™t be compared with pure-play day or boarding schools, they are ranked separately in the national and international categories. Ever since 2013 when the EWISR league tables, introduced for the first time in Indian history in 2007, were segregated to enable rational evaluation and comparison of primary-secondary schools inter se, the co-ed day-cum-boarding schools league table has been dominated by the vintage Daly College, Indore, The Valley School, Bangalore, DPS, R.K. Puram, Delhi and the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Delhi. However this year the Krishnamurti Foundation (Chennai)-promoted The Valley School, Bangalore, has been moved to the day schools category because it has almost closed down its residential facilities. Therefore, Daly College has easily topped the EWISR 2015 league table in this category. Sumer Singh, an experienced educationist who taught in several schools in Britain including Gordonstoun, and the Atlantic United World College, Wales, before returning to India as principal of Lawrence, Sanawar (1988-95), prior to being appointed principal of Daly College (DC, estb.1882) in 2003, welcomes the annual EWISR surveys for having created a œpositive environment for K-12 education countrywide. œSchool managements across the country are consciously striving to better their scores across all the well-chosen parameters of the annual EWISR and there™s great satisfaction within the teacher and student communities when their ratings and rankings improve. In DC, we are specially inspired by our top ratings under the parameters of life skills and conflict management, infrastructure provision, pastoral care, internationalism and community service, and our high scores for sports education and teachers™ competence and commitment. All these are high-priority focus areas for us, says Singh. Currently, the CBSE-affiliated DC, which is also a member of Round Square, London and the exclusive IPSC (Indian Public Schools Conference), has 1,857 students including 552 boarders, and 151 teachers plus 70 sports and 22 cultural activities teachers. Similarly, Dr. D.R. Saini, an economics and physical education alumnus of Panjab University who signed up as a teacher at Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, Delhi (DPSRKP, estb. 1972) in 1978 and was appointed principal of this highly-respected pioneer DPS school which has a massive complement of 7,473 students, including 3,364 girl…