Although single gender schools are going out of fashion, they have changed with the times and continue to remain popular with conservative middle class households determined to provide their progeny a good start in life. Here are India’s Top Boys Boarding Schools 2016-17. Dominated by Dehradun-based The Doon School (TDS, estb. 1935), the league table of India’s top boys boarding schools has not experienced much change in 2016, except that the neighbouring Welham Boys ranked #3 last year, has been elevated to share second rank with the Shimla-based Bishop Cotton School which achieved the singular feat of toppling TDS two years ago (2014). Mayo College, Ajmer, The Scindia School, Gwalior and the Sarala Birla Academy, Bangalore have retained their ranking at the Top 5 table in that order. Although single gender schools modelled after the renowned public schools of Britain are going out of fashion with the country’s fast-expanding newly-rich households increasingly attracted to new genre international schools affiliated with offshore examination boards, India’s best public (i.e, private, exclusive) boys and girls boarding schools with decades – even centuries – of tradition have changed with the times and remain popular with conservative middle class households determined to provide their progeny a good start in life. Apart from rigorous, disciplined primary-secondary education, because of their location in the hills, they also offer the advantages of clean air as also excellent sports and co-curricular education facilities. “Of course, I’m delighted that TDS is ranked India’s #1 all-boys boarding school in the EW India School Rankings 2016 for the second year consecutively. Having just been appointed headmaster, I cant claim any credit for it. Its the outcome of the hard work and dedication of the schools talented teachers and previous head Dr. Peter Mclaughlin. However, I intend to carry on their good work and well be introducing a new curriculum for classes VII-X and innovations in teaching, learning and pastoral care that will enable the school to improve continuously. We are an all-India school for exceptional boys from all backgrounds and we need to be exceptional for them”, says Matthew Raggett, an alumnus of Newcastle (UK) and Charles Stuart (Australia) universities who served as principal of the Leipzig (Germany) International Schools secondary section before he took charge as headmaster of TDS on July 1. Registered in 1935 by former Bengal advocate-general Satish Ranjan Das as a nationalist response to boarding schools established in India by British educationists, the wholly residential class VI-XII CISCE Delhi, CIE (UK) and IBO (Geneva)-affiliated TDS has 586 boys and 74 teachers on its muster rolls (tuition fee: Rs.10 lakh per year). Gunmeet Bindra, principal of Welham Boys’ School (estb.1937), is perhaps more satisfied with the second rank awarded by the 3,939 sample respondents in north India to Welham Boys’ in the EW India School Rankings 2016. Ever since she was a surprise appointee as the first woman principal of a major all-boys boarding school in 2011, Welham Boys has been steadily moving up in the EW boys boarding…
