Comparable with best

Congratulations for the comprehensive cover story ‘India’s most respected schools’ (EW August) ranking India’s top schools on the ‘respect quotient’. I truly enjoyed reading it. Although we are not listed in your league tables, I believe that the Army Public School situated in the heart of Bangalore is of a comparable quality with the best. You are welcome to send your correspondent to check out this claim. Manjula Raman Principal, Army Public School Bangalore Trendsetting feature Your cover story â€˜India’s most respected schools’ (EW August) is a pioneering effort that will go down as a masterpiece and trendsetter in the history of Indian education. Such a comprehensive effort using 12 parameters to measure excellence is a novel feature. My hearty congratulations to you and your team for this macro-exercise. A.S. Seetharamu Bangalore (Dr. Seetharamu is a former professor of education at ISEC, Bangalore — Editor) Trouble in store Thanks for initiating, commissioning and publishing the first league tables of India’s most respected schools (EW cover story August). It made very interesting and absorbing reading. However you should brace yourself for a storm of protests from some well-known schools which have not figured at all in the rankings/ratings. There’s something not quite right about a survey of the country’s best schools which doesn’t include world class institutions such as Mayo College, Ajmer, St. Paul’s, Darjeeling and the Woodstock School, Mussoorie in the master table of 72 most respected schools. A major cause as you have acknowledged, is that your research agency IMRB has made this a lower middle class survey by pitching the average household income of respondents (Rs.16,255 per month) too low. People in this income bracket are unlikely to know or care about the high-end schools missing from the league tables. But the fault is not entirely yours/IMRB’s. The truth is that (unlike the DPS management) the principals of most upscale schools don’t know the ABC of brand promotion. They seem to believe that because they have long waiting lists for admission, they don’t need to bother about brand building. But as the anonymous “golden handcuffed” Bangalore-based teacher of an international school quoted by you rightly points out, schools need to be well-known and widely respected to attract the best teachers as also public goodwill in case things go wrong. By setting up enclaves of privilege in remote areas without bothering about their public image, ‘public’ and ‘interna-tional’ schools are storing up trouble for themselves. Ram Naresh Bagariya Delhi Appropriate medium Your latest issue featuring the cover story titled ‘EW-IMRB survey of India’s most respected schools’ (EW August) looks great. I am impressed by the elaborate criteria you have devised to arrive at the final rankings of the country’s most popular schools. As an avid reader of several mainstream magazines and EW, I always felt that surveys ranking the best schools, colleges, professional institutions, B-schools etc should be ideally done by you and not politics-oriented periodicals like Outlook and India Today. The survey has produced interesting results such as DPS, R.K Puram being ranked higher than the prestigious Doon School, Dehradun. This is…