Girls boarding schools are valuable national assets because they provide access to a wide range of co-curricular and sports education and greater personality development opportunities, than to girl children in day schools
Top-ranked SKV principal Nishi Misra
Although gender-segregated schools are fading out of fashion as testified by the explosion of co-ed schools in all categories, in the world’s most diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation with millions of households governed by strict conservative mores that discourage if not prohibit, social interaction between boys and girl children from early age, gender segregated, especially, all-girls schools serve a useful social purpose.
They enable girl children who would otherwise be confined to home and hearth and denied high and higher secondary school education, to avail it. Arguably, girls boarding schools render greater service and opportunity to the cause of women’s emancipation than girls day schools inasmuch as boarders are provided egalitarian environments far removed from conservative home environments in which gender inequality is routinely practised. Besides, girls boarding schools offer students access to a wide range of co-curricular and sports opportunities which tend to be denied to girl children in day schools.
Therefore ever since the sui generis EducationWorld India School Rankings were introduced 15 years ago, girls (day and boarding) schools have been accorded as much importance as league tables ranking co-ed schools and other genre primary-secondary schools. Although your editors believe that multiplication and proliferation of co-ed schools, which encourage interaction between boys and girl children from early age, is the preferable option because they facilitate mindsets of mutual respect and gender egalitarianism during schooling years, girls boarding schools — institutions equipped with excellent contemporary infrastructure — which enable girl children to access co-curricular, life skills and sports education are valuable national assets. It’s a telling statistic of the high respect the best girls residential schools are accorded by informed society that aggregate scores of the Top 4 girls boarding schools in EWISR 2022-23 are greater than of the Top 4 boys boarding schools.
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