India’s top residential schools 2008-09

There was widespread dissatisfaction with last years league tables and ranking of boarding schools within the public, and within the offices of EducationWorld. Presumably because of a predominantly SECB (socio-economic category ‘B) respondents sample who tend to prefer day schools, some of the countrys most well-known traditional boarding schools such as Mayo College Ajmer, Rishi Valley School Chitoor, Scindia School Gwalior, and Maharani Gayatri Devi Jaipur, didnt figure in the league tables at all. On the contrary several predominantly day schools with small boarder contingents such as DPS, R.K. Puram, Delhi and Bishop Cotton Boys, Bangalore ranked high in the Top 10 table of residential schools. Therefore wiser for the experience, while conducting the EducationWorld Schools Survey 2008-09, the C fore management took special care to include only such institutions in which the great majority of students are boarders in lists shown to sample respondents to rate and rank residential schools. Moreover genuinely international schools, i.e institutions offering foreign examination board syllabuses plus international standard facilities and infrastructure, were distinguished from traditional British-inspired boarding schools and rated and ranked separately. Consequently this time round, the league table of India’s top residential schools 2008-09 is much more compatible with informed public opinion. The Top 10 list is headed by The Doon School, Dehradun (estb.1935), which was also ranked first last year and is generally acknowledged as the country’s best boarding school, particularly for the quality of its management and alumni. But there isnt much of a difference in the aggregate score awarded by sample respondents to Doon (1094) and the vintage (estb.1875) Mayo College, Ajmer (1088). Indeed on several parameters of excellence — academic reputation, co-curricular activities and selectivity (in admission) policy, Mayo has been rated higher than Doon. “We’ve been fortunate in being blessed with visionary headmasters who have recruited dedicated teachers, many of whom have given their lives to the development of this school. A compact campus of 70 acres gives us the advantage of being able to maintain our grounds, buildings and infrastructure well. Moreover we take special care to choose our students through thorough and provenly fair procedures, after which we ensure they develop their personalities and extra-curricular skills. All this plus a large and distinguished alumni base have contributed to our status and reputation”, says Kanti Bajpai, a former Union external affairs ministry bureaucrat who quit government service and took charge as headmaster of Doon in 2003. Pramod Sharma, principal of the second-ranked Mayo College, Ajmer is also encouraged by the high ratings and ranking received by Mayo, which was conspicuously absent from the EW Survey of Schools 2007. This poll survey reaffirms our faith in our students, faculty and systems. We are particularly encouraged by the high ratings we have received on the parameters of faculty competence and infrastructure. We are perhaps the only school in India with our own horses and active polo playing students, and a nine-hole golf course. These facilities are testimony to the importance we accord to sports education, says Sharma.…