The annual EWISR has matured and evolved into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey, assessing India’s best 4,500 primary-secondaries in 523 towns and cities under 15 granular parameters of education excellence.  In this Part-II of EWISR 2026-27, we present league tables ranking Day Ivy League, India’s best Day Schools — city, state, national (co-ed day, boys, girls and day-cum-boarding) and Vintage Legacy Day schools within these sub-categories

Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen

 

Finally 79 years after independence and 26 years after EducationWorld was launched in 1999 with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, India’s dilapidated education system is at inflection point.

Since July after the newly-promoted education-focused  Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) which forced the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, Union minister of education, on the issue of negligent management of the NEET-UG 2026 medical entrance exam and CBSE’s newly mandated On-Screen marking (OSM) system, the young CJP leadership is now focused on the crisis in the country’s 1.10 million government primary schools most of whom are denied electricity, drinking water, toilets, commute logistics, and are obliged to suffer chronic teacher truancy and multigrade teaching in crumbling single classrooms.

By focusing on the rock-bottom and hostile teaching-learning conditions prevalent in publicly-funded government schools, young CJP leaders have demonstrated greater wisdom about national development priorities than armies of distinguished economists who manned 13 Soviet-style Planning Commissions constituted to draw up priorities for the balanced development of post-independence India’s economy. In retrospect, it’s astonishing that despite a plethora of international evidence, economists who manned these high-powered five-year Planning Commissions never cottoned on that good quality foundational education is the non-negotiable precondition of national development. To their credit, the youthful leaders of CJP have cottoned on.

Also to your editors’ credit, we have been focused on education reform and upgradation for the past quarter century. For 26 years, EducationWorld — The Human Development Magazine (estb.1999) has been advocating top priority for human capital development — equipping 1.10 million ramshackle government schools with enabling infrastructure; according high importance to early childhood education; teacher training; addressing chronic teacher absenteeism; improving children’s  learning outcomes and increasing annual outlay (Centre plus states) for education to 6 percent of GDP as recommended by the Kothari Commission in 1967 — even providing a calculus/schema to attain this objective — with limited success. Neither the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre (2004-14) nor the incumbent BJP-led NDA government thereafter, nor the establishment; parents or students paid much attention.

Nevertheless through sheer persistence, your editors have been successful in moving the needle of public policy in the cause of ECCE (early childhood care and education); greater emphasis on skilling; greater academy-industry alignment, and policy liberalisation for foreign universities entering India. But implementation progress on all these issues has been slow. To its credit Gen Z, unlike its predecessor lotus-eating generations, has been quick to foresee the bleak future that awaits them if the entire education system from preschool to Ph D is not overhauled starting now.

That’s why CJP’s School Thik Karo (Mend Schools) campaign using social media reels to project the pathetic infrastructure and dismal conditions of government schools that tutor and mentor 52 percent of India’s 240 million school-going children has struck a resonant chord countrywide. Inevitably as recorded year after year by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the independent Pratham Education Foundation which tests rural primary school children at home (not in school premises), learning outcomes are rock bottom: over 50 percent of class VII children can’t read class III textbooks in their own vernacular languages, and only 30 percent can solve simple division and multiplication sums. 

 Against this backdrop way back in 2007, we introduced the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) which has since matured and evolved into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey, assessing India’s best 4,500 primary-secondaries in three major categories — Day, Boarding and International — and in 29 sub-categories under them. We have learned from experience this fine gradation is necessary to eliminate apples and oranges-type comparisons and provide a level playing field to all evaluated schools.

The obvious objective of the annual EWISR is to enable parents to choose the aptitudinally most suitable school for their children. But a secondary and as important objective is to stimulate the managements of India’s best primary-secondaries to strive for continuous improvement to provide holistic primary-secondary education outcomes on a par with the world’s best. Although cynics may cavil that EWISR, which evaluates a mere 4,500 schools out of a universe of 1.4 million, ex facie  contradicts our claim that the annual EWISR is the world’s largest schools ranking survey, it should be borne in mind that only a small minority of schools have a regional — let alone national — profile. Yet our USP (unique sales proposition) is that EWISR not only ranks India’s best schools in three major and 29 sub-categories, it also ranks them in their states and 523 towns and cities under 15 granular parameters of education excellence (teacher competence, teacher welfare and development, leadership, sports education, infrastructure etc) — attention to detail that is globally unmatched. A third objective is that India’s best should serve as role models for over 1.4 million schools not included in EWISR league tables.

In light of heavy responsibility to ensure that EWISR 2026-27 schools are ranked objectively at arm’s length distance, the task of ascertaining informed public opinion to rate and rank India’s best schools has been entrusted to the independent AZ Research Partners Pvt. Ltd (estb.2002), a Bangalore-based professional market research agency with almost a quarter century experience of quantitative and qualitative market research. To evaluate schools in three major categories and 29 sub-categories under them and rate them under 12-15 granular parameters of primary-secondary education excellence, starting in early May, AZ Research Partners constituted a national database of 18,000 sample respondents comprising 10,235 parents of in-school children and 7,642 knowledgeable principals, teachers and education counsellors. 

Mishra: fully structured questionnaire

“For this exercise, we used a fully structured questionnaire and responses have been entered using an online link. To conduct interviews with sample respondents, we gave them the option of face-to-face, telephonic and online link, and to control unfair push by any school or its support system, only one response has been accepted per selected respondent. Any response suspected of trying to influence results in favour of any school has been rejected. Learning continuously from experience, I believe we have developed a water-tight evaluation system for assessing schools in all major categories and sub-categories,” says Shubra Mishra, Founding-Director of AZ Research Partners. An alumna of IIM-Lucknow with a decade’s experience with pioneer market research companies (MARG, MARG-ORG) and in the corporate sector (Titan, Tata Tea and Blackstone Synovate), Mishra went solo in 2002 with the promotion of AZ Research Partners.

Moreover, to add an element of academic objectivity in EWISR, we have introduced the Global Young Scholar (GYS) Test in partnership with the US-based AccessUSA, co-founded by Raymond Ravaglia, former Dean and Director of Stanford University Pre-Collegiate Studies. Through April-August, schools were invited to nominate students to write the GYS test to assess their reasoning, skills and insights on a global scale.

Although EducationWorld pioneered arguably the world’s first multi-parameters ranking in 2007, over the years several pretender publications with minimal domain knowledge and events management companies have jumped on the schools ranking bandwagon. By publishing slapdash rankings driven mainly by quid pro quo considerations, they have aroused considerable skepticism about school and higher education institutional rankings. Inevitably, the annual EWISR is often tarred with the same brush, prompting cynics to question whether this elaborate annual exercise serves any useful purpose. 

Sinha: inclusive rankings

However, Saurav Sinha, Principal of the invariably top-ranked all-boys boarding school Mayo College, Ajmer (estb.1875), believes that over the past two decades since the annual EWISR was launched upon a complacent society, it has built a good reputation by including usually excluded budget private and government schools in its rankings survey.

“Without intending to flatter or curry favour, I confess that of some 25 publications and event management companies that offer to confer high rank and awards to Mayo College, the annual EWISR is the sole institutional rankings survey that the Mayo College management and Board of Trustees values. That’s because EW was the originator of these deeply ideated and evolving ranking league tables. Moreover EWISR is inclusive, ranking under-resourced budget private and also the best government schools. While for well-established institutions such as Mayo College, high rank is fairly routine by now, recognition and endorsement from EducationWorld is a tremendous morale booster and inspiration for under-resourced schools in smaller towns and cities to strive for continuous improvement. In turn, top-ranked BPS and government schools serve as models and good examples to thousands of schools in these categories. This is very much in the national interest,” says Sinha, a highly-qualified (Delhi University and London School of Business) former corporate executive who made a famous switchover from industry into education.

Even though such endorsements from genuine educationists are encouraging, despite continuous tweaking for improvement, there’s no denying that based as they are on the perceptions of 18,000 (albeit informed) respondents, the EWISR school ranking league tables are not perfect. Therefore, we always issue an annual caveat that they be utilised for shortlisting — rather selecting — the most suitable primary-secondary school for children. Choosing the most aptitudinally suitable schools for precious progeny requires further investigation of short-listed schools.

That said, last month (September) we featured league tables rating and ranking Boarding Ivy League, Boarding (co-ed, boys and girls), International Ivy League, International (day, day-cum-boarding and wholly residential) and vintage legacy schools. Also included were league tables ranking top Central and state government day and boarding schools, Special Needs, Philanthropic  and Super 50 budget private schools.

In this Part-II of EWISR 2026-27, we present league tables (and commentary) ranking India’s Ivy League Day Schools, best Day Schools  — city, state, national (co-ed day, boys, girls and day-cum-boarding) and Vintage Legacy Day schools (over 90 years vintage) within these sub-categories.

EWISR 2026-27 COUNTRYWIDE SURVEY