India’s top 25 Budget private schools

The country’s unique budget private schools are facing an existential crisis and are being forced to close down. However, they offer bottom-of-the-pyramid households an acceptable alternative to the country’s dysfunctional government schools For India’s lower middle class and bottom-of-the-pyramid households shortchanged by the country’s dysfunctional public education system defined by crumbling infrastructure, multi-grade classrooms, English language aversion, teacher absenteeism, corporal punishment and abysmal learning outcomes, the nation’s estimated 450,000 budget private schools (BPS) are manna from heaven. They provide English-medium education at monthly tuition fees ranging from a mere Rs.100-150 in rural India to Rs.300-600 in urban areas. A staggering number of 60 million children are reportedly enrolled in budget private schools countrywide. However, these affordable private schools are facing an existential crisis following enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Over the past eight years since the Act became law, an estimated 23,000 BPS have been forcibly closed down for non-compliance with s.19 and Schedule of the RTE Act, which makes it mandatory for all schools to comply with minimal infrastructure and teacher-pupil ratio norms. Iniquitously, private (but not government) schools, which fail to provide the infrastructure and teacher-pupil ratio norms prescribed by s.19, are subject to heavy fines and forcible closure. EducationWorld’s editorial opinion on BPS is unambiguous. We believe that BPS promoters who combine enlightened self-interest with social philanthropy are rendering a valuable service to the public. Therefore, instead of being forced to close down, they should be provided soft loans and official encouragement to upgrade their schools to comply with s.19 norms (see cover story April 2018, www.educationworld.in). Therefore to facilitate and celebrate the country’s best private budget schools, we have been rating and ranking them inter se for the past four years. As in previous years, this year too the BPS rankings have been conducted with the help of Delhi-based think-tank Centre for Civil Society (CCS, estb.1997) and the National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA, estb.2011), a representative organisation of 55,400 BPS in 20 states of the Indian Union. CCS and NISA shortlisted 25 well-managed BPS in six major cities. Subsequently, field representatives of C fore interviewed 1,027 SEC (socio-economic category) C, D and E parents and teachers to rate and rank them on 12 parameters of school education excellence. In the EW India Budget Private Schools Rankings 2018-19, St. Mary’s High School, Kalyan, Thane (Mumbai), previously ranked #2, has dethroned the three-time champion Muni International School, Delhi which has been pushed down to #2. SR Capital Public School, Delhi has retained its #3 position while Little Flower Matriculation Hr. Sec. School, Chennai has advanced to #4 from #6 in 2017. The other notable promotions are NES High School Bhandup, Mumbai to #7 (10) this year and M.A. Ideal High School, Hyderabad #9 (11). Strikingly, Holy Paradise High School, Vasai West, Mumbai and Priyadarshini School, Indrayani Nagar, Pune, both hitherto unranked, have been voted to the Top 10 league table. An English postgrad of Mumbai University and founder-principal of…