India’s most admired co-ed boarding schools 2023-24

With each passing year, the EWISR league tables of gender segregated all-boys and all-girls schools are shrinking while the league tables ranking co-ed day and co-ed boarding schools are expanding, indicating that the slow march towards gender equality is accelerating One of the major positive developments in K-12 education in post-independence India has been widespread acceptance of co-education. Whereas in the pre-independence era and even for several decades after freedom, gender segregated schools were normative, in the latter years of the 20th century and particularly since the dawn of the new millennium, the overwhelming majority of greenfield day, boarding and international schools, are co-ed. This is a socially beneficial development because when boys and girls start learning and playing together from a young age they also learn mutual self-respect and gender egalitarianism. For this socially beneficial development the Central and state governments which decreed co-education in government schools ab initio after independence, deserve a great share of the credit. However despite co-ed schools having become normative, girl children in Indian society continue to suffer socio-economic discrimination and inequality. Therefore the fact that the co-ed day and boarding school league tables have been expanding since the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) survey was first introduced in 2007, is a good augury. With each passing year, the EWISR league tables of gender segregated all-boys and all-girls schools are shrinking while the league tables ranking co-ed day and co-ed boarding schools are expanding, indicating that the slow march towards gender equality is accelerating. Last year following complaints of “uneven playing field” between newly promoted greenfield schools and well-established vintage/legacy boarding schools — some of them over a century old — we introduced a separate league table for vintage (over 90 years old) schools to be ranked inter se. The larger number of relatively newer schools are rated and ranked separately. Against this introductory backdrop, in the league table of co-ed boarding (non-vintage) schools there is a major reshuffle of the top table seating order. The low-profile, off-the-beaten-track Pinegrove School, Dharampur (Himachal Pradesh), ranked #4 in 2020-21 and #3 last year, is the country’s #1 co-ed boarding school of 2023-24, followed by the Assam Valley School, Balipara at #2 (#2 last year) jointly ranked with SelaQui International, Dehradun (4). These schools have outranked Chinmaya International, Coimbatore which was #1 last year and is ranked #3 in 2023-24. Miles Bronson, Guwahati #4 (5) co-ranked with Kasiga School, Dehradun (6) and Jain International, Bengaluru jointly ranked #5 (6) with Sahyadri School, Pune (8), complete the top table. The Top 10 league table is completed with Punjab Public School, Nabha at #6 (9), Anubhuti School, Jalgaon (Maharashtra) #7 (5), Rajghat Besant School, Varanasi #8 (10), Isha Home School, Coimbatore #9 (9) and the New Era High, Panchgani (Maharashtra) #10 (11). “All of us in Pinegrove are elated and thank the Almighty that we are ranked India’s #1 co-ed boarding school. It has been a long haul of 32 years during which we have worked assiduously to…