International day schools are popular with upper middle class households, because they provide globally benchmarked K-12 education at relatively affordable prices compared with international day-cum-boarding and wholly residential schools Rising middle class prosperity in post-liberalisation India — by 2025 the middle class will aggregate 583 million citizens — has fuelled a demand surge for schools providing internationally recognised qualifications and certification. To meet this demand from the burgeoning prosperous middle class, a new genre of international co-ed day schools providing curriculums, pedagogies and certification of globally reputed offshore exam boards such as International Baccalaureate (Geneva) and Cambridge International (UK) have sprung up in India’s crowded metros, state capitals, and even tier III-IV cities. These institutions are popular with upper middle class households because they provide globally benchmarked K-12 education at relatively affordable prices compared with international day-cum-boarding and wholly residential schools, which are obliged to make huge investments in housing and related facilities for boarders. Therefore, within the umbrella category of international schools, the league table of day schools is the largest (117), and lengthening every year. Against this backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that since 2013 when the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings, conceptualised and launched in 2007, were revised and redesigned to rate and rank India’s most admired primary-secondaries in three broad categories — day, boarding, and international — and several sub-categories (to eliminate apples and oranges type comparisons), Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai (DAIS, estb.2003), promoted by the family of legendary business leader Dhirubhai Ambani (1932-2002), founder-chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s most respected, efficient and valuable company (annual revenue: Rs.4.83 lakh crore), has consistently been voted India’s premier international day school. This year again in EWISR 2021-22, 11,458 sample respondents — parents, principals, teachers and educationists — have voted DAIS India’s #1 international day school awarding it top scores under the parameters of academic reputation, teacher competence, special needs education and also the newly introduced parameters of mental and emotional well-being and online education effectiveness. “We are honoured to receive this acknowledgement of our teaching-learning capabilities all these years. Right from start our objective was to develop DAIS into a caring and happy school. This objective has been substantially achieved by our extraordinary and dedicated teachers. Their dedication and commitment became visible when DAIS transitioned to a virtual school during the pandemic. All these years we have consistently been top-ranked under the parameters of teacher competence and academic reputation. During the pandemic lockdown our teachers justified our top score under these parameters by delivering effective online education and ensuring the mental well-being of our students as acknowledged by your sample respondents. Through high-quality online lessons, our teachers made digital learning very engaging and rewarding for our children. Credit must also be given to our vice-chairperson, Isha Ambani Piramal for being instrumental in DAIS going virtual in full swing in a short span of time,” says Nita Ambani, founder-chairperson of DAIS and the Reliance Foundation (estb.2010), the philanthropic initiative of Reliance Industries. Though Nita Ambani is satisfied with…
