The status quo has been maintained at the top table with Rishi Valley School, Chittoor and Doon School, Dehradun ranked the country’s top legacy boarding schools this year as well The great churn witnessed in the Top 10 rankings of India’s most admired day schools is not replicated in the league table of the country’s most respected traditional or legacy boarding schools. The status quo has been maintained at the summit with the new age Rishi Valley School, Chittoor established by seer-educationist J.D. Krishnamurti in 1926, retaining its numero uno position. Although another ‘swamiji school’ Chinmaya International Residential School, Coimbatore (CIRS) and the previously unranked Birla Public School, Pilani have entered the Top 10 list this year, the remaining seats at the top table have been allocated to India’s British-inspired traditional boarding schools with the top two girls’ schools — Mayo College Girls, Ajmer and Welham Girls following the blue-chip Doon School, Dehradun ranked second again this year. But with CIRS and Birla Public entering the Top 10 list, the seating arrangement at top table has been slightly rearranged with the neighbour schools of Lawrence, Sanawar and Bishop Cotton, Shimla sharing fifth place, Daly College, Indore moving down to sixth and Assam Valley, Balipara to No. 7, although this relatively new vintage class III-XII institution (estb. 1995) retains its stellar position as the top-ranked boarding school in eastern India. Yet while the public is likely to be impressed by Rishi Valley School (RVS) being ranked the country’s most respected legacy boarding school for the second year consecutively, Siddhartha Menon, vice-principal of the school is lukewarm about it. “RVS has never seen itself as being in competition with other schools. With due respect, we question whether school rankings add value to educational work around the country. We have great regard for a variety of sincere initiatives in education, and feel there is considerable scope for schools to learn from one another rather than be seen as pitted against each other,” says Menon. Nevertheless, Menon derives some measure of satisfaction from this year’s rankings in which new age schools, and Krishnamurti Foundation schools in particular, have been highly ranked. “Within the parents’ community, I sense much anxiety, arising partly out of disillusionment with mainstream education. It’s possible that people are becoming increasingly aware of the complex issues we face — socio-economic, environmental, sectarian and even psychological — and are seeking alternative approaches to them,” he adds. Beyond the Top 10, a noticeable feature of the boarding schools league table this year is that military schools promoted by the Indian Army or the defence services have considerably improved their ranking, with the Army Public School, Dagshai (Himachal Pradesh) weighing in at No.11, and the Rashtriya Indian Military College, Dehradun at 12. And in keeping with the broad trend of a swing of opinion in favour of ‘swamiji schools’, Chinmaya International Residential School, Coimbatore has considerably improved its public reputation rising from No.18 in 2011 to 9 this year, and has established itself as…
