Conducted
by the premier market research and polling company C fore, Delhi, the
EducationWorld India School Rankings 2012 ranks over 400 of the
country’s most well-known primary-secondaries on the basis of perceptual
ratings awarded by a carefully constituted sample respondents base of
3,070 parents, principals, teachers and educationists across 14
parameters of excellence. Dilip Thakore reports
While
economists, Central planners and other stalwarts of India’s
intelligentsia argue in favour of agriculture and industrial
productivity, managing inflation and fiscal deficits, cutting red tape
and/or reforming the electoral system, in EducationWorld we are
steadfast in our belief that the salvation and renaissance of 21st
century India is dependent upon successful nurturance and development of
the country’s abundant human resource endowment. Currently, the child
and youth population of the nation aggregates 550 million, of whom 175
million are below 14 years of age. Unfortunately post-independence
India’s purblind political class in Delhi and state capitals refuses to
learn from the example of the world’s most developed nations where
annual expenditure on education is 6-7 percent of GDP (gross domestic
product). Which is why they are members of the OECD (Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development) club of rich nations, and 65
years on, India isn’t.
Apart
from consistently highlighting the skewed development priorities of
government and India’s Soviet-style Planning Commission, since 2007 this
sui generis publication promoted with the mission statement to “build
the pressure of public opinion to make education the No.1 item on the
national agenda”, has been publishing annual league tables of India’s
most respected day, legacy boarding and new genre international schools,
rating and ranking them on several parameters. Moreover, driven by the
belief that foundational K-12 education is of prime importance for
developing India’s high-potential human resource, since 2010 we have
been rating and ranking preschools in six cities countrywide as well.
The
objective of rating and ranking primary-secondary schools (and
preschools) across a broad range of 14 parameters is to drive home the
message to educators and parents that there’s more to education than
academic achievement and excellence. We believe that teacher and parent
communities need to be disabused of the notion that the purpose of K-12
education is academic attainment and success in board examinations.
Therefore it’s a cause for satisfaction to us that over the past
quinquennium since the Education-World India school ranking league
tables were introduced, there is an emerging consensus that although
academic performance in school-leaving board examinations is of critical
impor-tance because it determines admission into the country’s small
minority of best undergraduate colleges, school manage-ments, teachers
and parents also need to focus on development activities such as sports
and life-skills education, teacher development and community service, to
produce well-rounded students equipped to succeed in higher education
and workplaces beyond academic ivory towers.
Yet
even as we expect schools to strive to improve their rankings year on
year by improving ratings on each parameter, on our part as well there
is continuous effort to improve the rating and ranking methodology. Thus
while in the first such exercise in 2007, all schools were rated and
ranked against each other resulting in apples and oranges being
compared, since 2008 schools have been divided into day, traditional or
legacy boarding and new genre international schools affiliated with
offshore examination boards.
Moreover,
with each passing year the number of parameters on which schools are
assessed are refined and increased on the basis of expert opinion to
enable respondents in the nationwide polling exercise to assess and rank
schools more accurately. In 2011, assessment parameters were increased
from 12 to 14. Simultaneously, the countrywide base of respondents
comprising parents, teachers, principals and educationists has been
steadily increased to 3,000-plus for this year’s poll. Furthermore, to
depict the nature of the survey more exactly, the nomenclature of the
league tables has been changed to EducationWorld India School Rankings
2012.
As
in the past five years, this year’s larger and improved field survey of
India’s top 443 primary-secondary schools has been conducted by the
Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore,
estb. 2000), a market research company which annually rates and ranks
B-schools for CNBC TV 18, and has been actively associated with the
rankings of educational institutions for the past 14 years. According to
Premchand Palety, an alumnus of Punjab Engineering College and Delhi’s
Fore School of Management and the founder-chief executive of C fore,
this year 195 C fore field surveyors interviewed a larger sample of
3,070 SECA (socio-economic category A) parents, teachers, principals
and educationists in 21 cities and education hubs (Delhi, Mumbai,
Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Vadodara, Ahmedabad,
Chand-igarh, Lucknow, Indore, Jamshedpur, Darjeeling, Shillong, Kochi,
Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Dehradun) across the country
asking them to rate schools within their geogr-aphical regions (north,
south, east and west) on a ten-point scale against 13 parameters and a
20-point scale for the vitally important parameter of ‘competence of
faculty’. Low-profile schools assessed by less than 25 sample
respondents have not been ranked.
This
year the assessment parameters are the same as last year, except that
‘quality of alumni’ has been replaced with ‘internat-ionalism’, to
impact the importance of promoting a broad-minded internation-alism
among students in an incrementally globalising world. Including this
singular change, this year the parameters of assessment are: teacher
welfare and development; competence of faculty; academic reputation;
co-curricular education; sports education; life-skills and conflict
management; individual attention to students (teacher-pupil ratio);
leadership/management quality; parental involvement in school
activities; infrastructure provision; internatio-nalism; special needs
education; value for money and community service.
This
year’s league tables also do away with the regional rankings of
yesteryear and replaces them with state and city rankings. The rationale
for this change is that in subcontinental India, regions (north, south,
east, west) tend to be very large and local conditions within them vary
too widely to afford a basis of comparison. Rating and ranking schools
within India’s 29 states — some of whom are equivalent to European
countries in terms of size and population — makes more sense, while in
the case of day schools, city-based comparisons are more logical as
parents aren’t likely to send children to day schools beyond municipal
limits.
Since
EducationWorld ventured into uncharted territory and began asses-sing
primary-secondary schools, public expectations have changed. The widely
prevalent practice of judging schools by the academic performance of
their students in board exams has been tempered by evaluation of other
liberal parameters of excellence, and cram schools are gradually
becoming unfash-ionable. “During the past few years, there’s been
growing appreciation of schools which offer students new pedagogies such
as experiential, collaborative and peer learning. Within parent and
teacher communities, there’s new awareness that school education should
be an engaging, joyful and life skills development experience for
children. Therefore, so-called alter-native schools which profess
holistic, new pedagogies have become more popular and have moved up the
tables,” says Palety.
The
churn in the league tables this year supports Palety’s analysis that
innovative schools experimenting with new pedagogies and involved with
their ecologies and local communities are the new favourites of informed
sample respondents of the Education-World-C fore India School Rankings
2012. In the pan-India day schools league table, Vasant Valley School, Delhi which is heavily into collaborative and peer learning is the new national No. 1, followed by The Valley School, Bangalore
which subscribes to the liberal education tenets of the late sage and
savant J.D. Krishnamurti (1895-1986). Moreover, the tiny (80 students) Centre for Learning, Bangalore — a self-styled alternative school — and The School, Krishnamurti Foundation Institute (KFI), Chennai have also zoomed up the league table to be ranked among the Top 10.
Likewise, among traditional/legacy boarding schools Rishi Valley School, Chittoor,
nationally reputed for its ecology and community service curriculum has
retained last year’s top-spot ranking. And among international schools, Indus International, Bangalore
which is highly committed to community service — the management has
const-ructed a parallel free school for poor neighbourhood children to
whom it offers the international IB primary and mid-years English
language curriculum — and invests heavily in teacher development and
welfare, has emerged as the new No. 1.
Detailed
national, state, and city rankings are presented in the following
pages. Also included are the rating scores and rankings of Top 10
schools nationwide under each of the 14 para-meters of primary-secondary
education excellence. Principals, parents and teachers should note that
while each section of this massive annual rating and ranking exercise
of India’s most resp-ected 443 schools includes a comm-entary, it’s a
summary rather than detailed elaboration of the league tables. The
wealth of data represented by the league tables can — and should — be
profitably mined by school managements to assess the perceived strengths
and weaknesses of India’s most respected schools included in the EW
India School Rankings 2012.
To read the full story and tables go to
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