The annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR), introduced in 2007 and continued ever since without a break-even in the pandemic year, has evolved into the world’s largest and most sophisticated schools ranking survey. Sophisticated because unlike other surveys that rank education institutions in India and abroad, the EWISR evaluates the country’s 2,500-3,000 most reputed primary-secondaries under more than a dozen parameters of K-12 education excellence, not merely on academics. That’s because ab initio since this unprecedented education-focused news magazine was tentatively launched exactly 22 years ago, we have held firm the belief that education at all levels should be an enjoyable, holistic experience for students, rather than the vale of tears which children’s education experience has been transformed into by post-independence India’s academics and exam outcomes obsessed public.
Fortunately, since then there has been a substantial even if inadequate, change in the public mindset in favour of balanced, holistic education to realise the full potential of children. Proof of this changed mindset is the growth of the annual EWISR into the world’s largest school ranking survey which arouses great enthusiasm, not only in India but in neighbouring countries where the best schools are ranked by specially constituted juries. Moreover, the geographical spread and number of schools ranked in EWISR has extended to 351 cities and almost 3,000 primary-secondaries countrywide with schools assessed under 14 parameters and ranked nationally, in their host states and cities.
And since the annual EWISR is essentially a perception-based nationwide survey of knowledgeable sample respondents comprising educationists, principals, teachers, parents and senior students, it’s a massive exercise requiring 120 field personnel of our partner organisation, Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000) — a nationally reputed market research and opinion polls company — to interview more than 11,000 sample respondents countrywide over four months.
But despite the substantial resources invested by your editors in the annual EWISR and the great boost, it has given to holistic education and human capital development, some academics and school leaders are dissatisfied and critical. They believe that perception-based evaluation and ranking league tables are imperfect. Yet a physical audit of 1.6 million schools would stretch for years, apart from being ruinously expensive. In the prevailing circumstances, the EWISR institutional evaluation methodology is the best option available.
Please note we don’t claim that the EWISR league tables are holy writ. At best they enable parents to short-list the most convenient and aptitudinally suitable primary-secondaries for their children and select the final one after careful study of short-listed schools.
Against this backdrop, we present the comprehensive and as yet unmatched EWISR 2021-22 as the bumper cover story of our 22nd-anniversary issue. Also, check out the special anniversary essays written by brilliant public intellectuals.
