The league table of international day schools in the annual EWISR is lengthening every year with new institutions springing up in metros, state capitals and even tier III and IV cities across the country. This year’s league table of India’s best international day schools is 123-strong
DAIS’ founder-chairperson Nita Ambani
Arelatively new post-1991 (when the heavily regulated, cabined, cribbed and confined Indian economy was substantially — but not sufficiently — deregulated) phenomenon, international schools affiliated with globally reputed offshore examination boards such as International Baccalaureate (Geneva/The Hague), Cambridge Assessment International Education (UK) and Advance Placement, USA, are unpopular with politically correct lefties who dominate the academy and media. They are adjudged elitist and too expensive.
However, international schools benchmarked against the world’s most well-equipped and studentsenabling K-12 schools, serve very useful purposes. First, they set infrastructure, teacher recruitment and development, curriculum and pedagogy and life skills education standards for aspirational schools. Secondly, they nurture and educate children of the rich, who as the great institutions builder the late Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy, founder-director of JBIMS and NITIE, Mumbai and IIM-Bangalore, famously remarked, would otherwise loiter in public spaces fomenting trouble. Therefore, the small but fortunately steadily expanding number of private international schools which levy tuition fees substantially lower than international schools abroad, are national assets. Moreover, international schools are invariably genderintegrated (co-ed) institutions which is another social benefit.
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