Schools inducted into the Ivy League category are on a par with the best in the West and worldwide. As last year, only five routinely top-ranked Day-cum-Boarding schools have been elevated to the Ivy League category

Emerald Heights’ Siddharth Singh (right): enabling modern infrastructure

Essentially day schools which also offer outstation households the option of boarding school infrastructure and facilities, day-cum-boarding schools have become increasingly popular with the country’s fast multiplying post-liberalisation upper middle and elite households. Typically they host a mix of local day scholars and boarders from distant cities, small towns, and often overseas, offering excellent student body diversity. Moreover compared with day schools simpliciter, they also tend to offer superior infrastructure, with enhanced sports and recreational facilities designed to keep boarding students engaged beyond school hours. Day scholars also benefit from these resources, resulting in a more balanced and holistic education experience for all students.

Located mostly on greener outskirts of India’s poorly planned metropolitan cities, day-cum-boarding schools are attracting children from upscale households sited in traffic-congested cities. To avoid the stress of long daily commutes, many parents now choose to enrol their children as weekly boarders — students who live on campus during the week and return home for the weekends.

Last year when your editors introduced the pioneer Ivy League categories — Day, Boarding and International — a special category was created for Day-cum-Boarding schools on the reasoning that this progressive genre of institutions are sui generis. Their wide student body diversity and infrastructure aside, they are overwhelmingly co-ed institutions in which boys and girl children learn together from early age and absorb the virtues of gender egalitarianism and mutual respect which is likely to improve female labour force participation (FLFP), a socio-economic development metric under which India suffers in comparison with developed Western countries and several Asian nations.

Modern School’s Dr. Vijay Datta: deserving elevation

In the opinion of the well-reputed independent market research agency, AZR Research Partners and your editors, schools inducted into the Ivy League category are on a par with best schools in the West and worldwide. As last year, only five routinely top-ranked Day-cum-Boarding schools have been elevated to the Ivy League category — Emerald Heights International, Indore; Greenwood High, Bengaluru; Daly College, Indore; Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Delhi, and Sai International, Bhubaneswar.

Daly College principal Gunmeet Bindra & students

With educationists and school leaders experiencing déjà vu and tedium about the same schools routinely topping the composite league tables of Day, Boarding and International schools in recent years, the initiative to introduce the Ivy League tables in all major categories to create upward mobility opportunities for schools ranked next best for several years has been widely welcomed.

According to Dr. Gunmeet Bindra, an alumna of Calcutta University and the Delhi School of Economics, appointed the first woman principal of Daly College, Indore in 2022, clubbing routinely top ranked schools into a new Ivy League category last year, is a “brilliant and inspiring idea”. “It relieves EW readers of the tedium of seeing the same names in the Top 10 league tables, incentivises schools to strive for Ivy League status while enabling new schools to rise to the top in non-Ivy League categories,” Bindra said in an interview with EducationWorld last year.

Little wonder that Siddharth Singh, a business management alum of Stony Brook University, New York under whose watch the Emerald Heights International School, Indore (estb.1982) had been ranked India’s #1 Day-cum-Boarding school for five years consecutively, is relieved that EHIS has been promoted to the Ivy League category with best scores under the parameters of sports education, infrastructure, community service and leadership.

“I am delighted that EHIS which topped the national Day-cum-Boarding schools league table for the past several years has been elevated to the Ivy League category. Promoting schools with stable high-rank for years to this new exclusive category serves a useful purpose because it provides other good schools a chance to advance up the main league table. I am very pleased that after years of topping the national Day-cum-Boarding schools league table, EHIS has been promoted to the Ivy League category with excellent scores under the parameters of academic reputation, sports education, and infrastructure. This indicates that in EHIS we spare no effort to provide our students the most modern infrastructure to enable them to excel academically, and in co-curricular and sports education — all of which adds up to well-rounded holistic education. The outcome is that children learn happily and enjoy mental and emotional well-being which is a high-priority focus area for the school management,” says Singh. Currently EHIS, Indore has 4,200 students, including 800 boarders mentored by 200 teachers, and recently started a second school in Indore which already has 1,500 students (“because of the good reputation of EHIS”) on it muster rolls.

Ditto Dr. Vijay Datta, the highly qualified (B.Sc and English postgrad of Rajasthan University, NCERT Ph D) and experienced (Mayo College and Army School, Dagshai) Principal of the routinely high ranked Modern School, Barakhamba Rd, Delhi (MSBR). “It’s great to learn about this elevation. Dedicated hard work is rewarded sooner or later,” says Datta. Datta is especially satisfied with the high scores awarded to MSBR under the parameters of academic reputation — “over 120 of our class XII students who wrote the CBSE class XII board exam averaged over 90 percent”; co-curricular activities and internationalism – “choc-a-bloc activities and programmes calendar”; infrastructure — “we have totally refurbished and rejuvenated this vintage (estb.1920) school adding a new girls boarding house”; and leadership — “good to hear”. “MSBR is now a 106-year-old institution. I am very pleased that we have been awarded the status and recognition that we deserve,” says Datta.