The uniqueness of EWISR, introduced in 2007, is that institutional rankings are based on careful evaluation of 14 discrete parameters of school education excellence. Moreover, schools are grouped within their own categories to eliminate apples and oranges type comparisons, writes Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen. It’s the time of year when the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) are presented to the public. Especially the educator and parents communities. For principals, teachers and educators, the annual EWISR is important and of interest because it enables them to learn the reputation of their school in relation to competitor institutions. For parents the annual EWISR is important because it may influence a change of institution to ensure their children are in schools that best develop their special aptitudes. The uniqueness of EWISR, introduced in 2007, is that institutional rankings are based on careful evaluation of 14 discrete parameters of school education excellence. Moreover, schools are grouped within their own categories to eliminate apples and oranges type comparisons. For instance, co-ed day-cum-boarding schools are ranked with each other and not with day boys or girls schools. By the same logic, all ranked schools are divided under the umbrella categories of day, boarding and international schools. Another special feature of the annual EWISR is that it is a national survey based on field interviews. Ab initio, your editors resisted availing the easy option of constituting a jury of eminent educationists and enclosing them in a room to award scores under our chosen parameters of excellence and total the scores to rank schools. We were aware that with education being accorded low priority by government and the media — EW launched in 1999 with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, was the first news and features periodical in this space — there was sparse awareness even among experienced educationists about schools beyond their parishes. Therefore, we chose the more painstaking — and expensive — option of engaging the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), a highly reputed market research and opinion polls company, to conduct field interviews with 12,000-14,000 educationists, principals, teachers and parents countrywide to rate and rank schools in their regions under chosen parameters of primary-secondary education excellence. Since then over the past 16 years, the annual EWISR based on this methodology — which eliminates subjectivity and bias to the maximum extent possible — of rating and ranking over 4,000 of the country’s primary-secondaries in over a dozen separate categories and under 14 parameters of excellence — has evolved into the gold standard of school rankings. Sure, with the success of EWISR which has achieved global renown — schools in several neighbouring countries have pleaded for inclusion — competitive rankings have sprung up. But school managements and parents are advised caution against relying on thinly plagiarised versions of EWISR. Firstly, because they suffer the infirmity of jury-based rankings alluded to above, and also because of…
