The biggest upset of EWISR 2020-21 is the toppling of The Doon School, Dehradun, ranked #1 since 2007, from its premier podium position in the boys boarding schools category Although gender segregated schools are increasingly going out of fashion in the new age of women’s lib and equality, some of India’s vintage all-boys boarding schools sited in salubrious hill stations in the best traditions of Great Britain’s famous boys boarding schools such as Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Rugby, have acquired formidable reputations that endure within post-independence India’s elite, upper and aspirational middle classes. However, in recent years, vintage all-boys boarding schools established in the 19th century (Bishop Cotton Boys, Shimla, St. Paul’s, Darjeeling, among others) have been eclipsed in the popular imagination by legacy boarding schools with Indian flavour. In particular, the class VI-XII The Doon School (TDS, estb.1935) promoted with nationalist impulses on the eve of India’s independence emerged as a role model school for the great majority of boys and girls boarding schools. Therefore, unsurprisingly since the pioneer EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) were introduced in 2007, TDS has been voted the #1 boys boarding school, except in 2014 when that year’s sample respondents awarded top rank to Bishop Cotton, Shimla. However over the past decade, the total score gap between TDS and runners-up who have replicated its best practices has been closing. Last year (2019-20), the pronouncedly culturally nationalist The Scindia School, Gwalior (SSG, estb.1897) was jointly top ranked with TDS, and this year’s 11,368 sample respondents have decisively voted SSG #1 with a clear margin. This is undoubtedly the biggest upset of EWISR 2020-21. Informed monitors of the national education scene attribute the erosion of TDS’ formidable brand equity to the school’s board of governors, breaking with latter-day tradition and appointing two expatriates in succession as headmasters of this all-boys boarding school, promoted (by brilliant Calcutta barrister S.R. Das) eight decades ago out of nationalist impulses and as a reaction to several vintage boys boarding schools established by our erstwhile masters expressing reluctance to admitting the progeny of even upper-class natives. In 2009 after notable academic Kanti Bajpai, currently professor at National University of Singapore, retired, having served a six-year tenure as headmaster of this class VI-XII school, whose alumni are a veritable Who’s Who of the Indian establishment, the school’s governing board appointed Dr. Peter Mclaughlin who served two three-year terms (2009-16) and Matthew Raggett who was reportedly sacked earlier this year. Clearly, the appointment of these two red brick university graduates of no special merit as headmasters of these premier boys boarding school in succession has disappointed well-informed EW sample respondents who have dislodged it from its usual position in the annual EWISR. Following the termination of Raggett’s contract in March, the TDS board of governors chaired by Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman of Hero Motorcorp Ltd, has made amends by appointing the highly articulate and experienced Dr Jagpreet Singh, a former TDS teacher and hitherto principal of the Punjab Public School, Nabha which he…
