India’s best girls boarding schools 2018-19
EducationWorld September 2018 | Cover Story Magazine
Led by a new generation of highly-qualified and professionally accomplished women leaders and champions of gender rights and equality, girls boarding schools are flourishing. Here are India’s best girls boarding schools 2018-19 With the emancipation of women and gradual — perhaps too gradual — rise in the social phenomenon of gender egalitarianism, sexually segregated (aka single sex) all-boys and all-girls schools are fading out of fashion. Nevertheless, given that India is a large and diverse democracy which hosts citizens of over a dozen major religious persuasions, distinctive cultures and mores and in which patriarchy is far from dead, strong and sustained demand for sexually segregated schools, and even higher education, persists. Usually sited in salubrious environments including India’s unique hill stations which offer increasingly rare clean air and water, and led by a new generation of highly qualified and professionally accomplished women leaders and champions of gender rights and equality, the country’s vintage girls boarding schools are flourishing, even if the general preference is for co-ed boarding schools. Ever since the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables were introduced over a decade ago, the pecking order at the very top of the girls boarding schools league tables has changed continuously. Initially, the contenders for top spots were Mayo College Girls School, Ajmer (estb. 1988) and the Welham Girls School (WGS), Dehradun (1957). But of late, the all-girls Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior (1956) which prides itself on its rooted nationalistic culture, has not only transformed the duopoly at the apex of the girls boarding schools league table into a three-horses race, but was ranked #1 last year. This year, Welham Girls has regained its 2014-15 #1 rank with Mayo College and Scindia Kanya jointly ranked #2. The 2018-19 Top 5 table of girls legacy boarding schools is completed by the glitzy new Unison World School, Dehradun (estb.2007) jointly ranked #3 with the Mussoorie International School (1984), the Mody School, Lakshmangarh, Rajasthan (1989) which has been steadily rising in the esteem of the informed public at #4, and Ecole Globale International, Dehradun promoted to #5 this year. Padmini Sambasivam, a zoology, medical sciences, genetics and education alumna of Madras University, former founder principal of the Arshya Vidya Mandir School, Chennai and former academic director of the Peevees Group in Saudi Arabia, who was appointed principal of WGS in 2016, affirms her belief in the annual EWISR survey. “When a credible external agency such as C fore conducts a nationwide survey and confers the #1 rank on us based on the work we do, it’s a great impetus and inspiration, and enables us to relentlessly strive for higher ratings on the 14 parameters of education excellence. On the other hand, by highlighting the areas where we haven’t done well, the EWISR survey provides a guide to improvement in those areas,” says Sambasivam, who has comfortably slipped into the large boots of the formidable Jyotsna Brar who during her long term as principal (2000-2015) piloted this all-girls boarding school to the very top…