Normatively sited on sprawling campuses on the outskirts of metros and big cities, international day-cum-boarding schools offer globally benchmarked curriculums, new-tech enabled pedagogies, state-of-the-art academic, sports and co-curricular education facilities and high-quality teachers, including expatriate faculty India’s international day-cum-boarding schools affiliated with globally respected examination boards are sui generis — in a class by themselves. Normatively sited on sprawling campuses bristling with state-of-the-art infrastructure on the outskirts of metros and other big cities, they admit day scholars and boarders, providing globally benchmarked curriculums, new-tech enabled pedagogies, state-of-the-art academic, sports and co-curricular education facilities and high-quality teachers, including expatriate faculty. While day scholars benefit from the excellent infrastructure and facilities built for boarders, the latter benefit by way of student body diversity. In addition, flexible residential plans including weekly board and lodging options, allow students to spend weekends at home or with friends and relatives. Given this wide-ranging menu of academic and co-curricular options, it’s unsurprising that international day-cum-boarding schools are becoming particularly popular with the expanding number of nuclear households with working parents. Ever since 2013 when the annual EW India School Rankings were divided into three principal categories — day, boarding and international — and further sub-divided into ten sub-categories to eliminate apples with oranges comparisons, the international day-cum-boarding schools national league table has been dominated by the brilliantly conceptualised Indus International School, Bengaluru (IIS-B, estb.2003). This year too, 11,458 sample respondents polled by the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research (C fore) have voted IIS-B India’s #1 international day-cum-boarding school with top scores under the parameters of leadership, community service, teacher welfare and development, online education effectiveness, and curriculum and pedagogy across all sub-categories of international schools. Set within a 40-acre green campus in suburban Bengaluru, this Cambridge International and IB-affiliated K-12 school provides its 1,100 students from 33 countries a stimulating, globally comparable academic, sports, co-curricular and performing arts education. “We are thrilled that IIS-B is ranked India’s #1 international school for the tenth year in a row. This is validation that the IIS brand of innovative, enriched all-round education has been successful. I am especially happy that IIS-B is ranked #1 under the parameter of online education effectiveness and curriculum and pedagogy as over the past pandemic year, we have creatively reinvented curriculums and pedagogies to deliver highly effective online learning. I also want to congratulate EducationWorld for introducing the CENTA Subject Competency Test which our teachers enjoyed writing as it tested their subject knowledge as well as application skills. Now as we reopen for all classes, we are focusing on bridging learning gaps through an intelligent mix of offline and online learning,” says Sarojini Rao, an economics and education alumna of Pune and Annamalai universities and principal of IIS-B since 2005. For IIS-B’s continuous top table presidency, Rao credits Lt. Gen (Retd.) Arjun Ray, CEO of the Indus Trust, for shaping IIS-B, into India’s role model international day-cum-boarding school. A highly decorated general of the Indian Army, Ray has also masterminded establishment of two other…
