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, inEducationWorld 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 importance because it determines admission into the country’s small minority of best undergraduate colleges, school managements, 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.
This year the assessment parameters are the same as last year, except that ‘quality of alumni’ has been replaced with ‘internationalism’, to impact the importance of promoting a broad-minded internationalism 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; internationalism; special needs education; value for money and community service.
Since EducationWorld ventured into uncharted territory and began assessing 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 unfashionable. “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 alternative schools which profess holistic, new pedagogies have become more popular and have moved up the tables,” says Palety.
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 constructed 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.
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