Responding to feedback and advice of Raymond Ravaglia, a Director of the US-based education research firm Launchpad Rankings LLC, EW presents a new category of cluster ranked boarding schools with consistently high scores under critical parameters of primary-secondary education excellence

Although cadillac communists and woke liberals who dominate the media will never agree, over the past 25 years since it was launched, EducationWorld (estb.1999) has transformed the country’s education landscape. Now, there is a palpable sense of urgency about developing this slothful republic’s abundant and high-potential human resource.

In notable departure from established tradition, media pundits now routinely include education reform in the lengthy national development prescriptions they write to vault performance-laggard India into the club of developed nations. Gradually — perhaps too gradually — public opinion is warming to the EW proposition that quality education for all (QEFA) is the essential precondition of attaining the Viksit Bharat and $30 trillion GDP (cf. 4 trillion currently) goals set for 2047, the centenary year of India’s independence from almost 200 years of foreign rule.   

Similarly, the pioneer EducationWorld India School Rankings, introduced in 2007, which rates and ranks schools under several parameters of primary-secondary education excellence, has had the beneficial outcome of jolting awake conscientious leaders of the country’s 1.40 million primary-secondary schools.

Mayo College principal Saurav Sinha: new technologies & branding initiatives

Since then every September, great excitement is generated within their managements, faculty and students before and after publication of the annual EWISR league tables rating and ranking the country’s most admired 4,000-4,500 schools in three major (day, boarding and international) categories and 14 sub-categories (to eliminate apples with oranges type comparisons). This is in the national interest. Because when school leaders and managements — totally ignored by the mainstream media until EducationWorld arrived on the media scene — develop institutional pride and compete for higher rank, the entire system is uplifted as lower ranked schools learn about the best practices of their peers.

This is especially true because unlike school ranking surveys in the idealized West which rank schools under the solitary parameter of learning outcomes, ab initio in the annual EWISR we introduced the concept of evaluating schools under several parameters — which have grown to 14 — on the premise that best schools are institutions that provide balanced, holistic, including sports, co-curricular education and also build comprehensive teaching-learning ecosystems by paying attention to teacher welfare and development, community service, parental involvement, leadership development, mental and emotional well-being services  etc. Contrary to widespread parental expectation, your editors believe that learning should be a joyful experience for children and youth.

An inevitable consequence of pioneering the annual EWISR is that several pretender publications driven exclusively by the profit motive and shallow commitment to the larger cause of “building the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda” have clambered aboard the schools ranking bandwagon and publish plagiarized versions of EWISR.

Therefore to remain ahead and differentiate us from them, the annual EWISR is continuously evolving by way of refreshing parameters of school education excellence. Among the new parameters introduced in recent years are curriculum and pedagogy,  internationalism and mental and emotional wellbeing services. Moreover beginning this year, drawing inspiration from America’s globally respected Ivy League universities, we have introduced a new category of Ivy League schools.

Ivy League schools are primary-secondaries that have been consistently high ranked in previous years, with sustained high scores under critically important parameters such as teacher welfare and competence; academic reputation, co-curricular and sports education, individual attention to students, parental involvement and special needs education. These consistently high-performing institutions have been elevated to the Ivy League category of select schools.

Ravaglia: cluster rankings advice

“When the quality of education provided by schools is too close to call, it’s advisable to cluster rank and differentiate them by star point rankings reflecting minor decimal point differences. This rankings innovation acknowledges that selecting suitable schools isn’t about fine-grained metrics but about understanding the overall quality, focus and educational environments that excellent schools provide,” says Raymond Ravaglia, a Stanford University alum and former Dean and Director of Stanford University Pre-Collegiate Studies and Founder of the Stanford Online High School, and currently a Director of the US-based education research firm Launchpad Rankings LLC. Through use of sophisticated AI-driven technologies Launchpad has number-crunched previous years’ EWISR parameter scores and information contained in our database about schools’ board exam results and teacher/student performance in tests such as EW-Centa Teacher Subject Competency, LogiQids Higher Order Thinking Skills and Global Young Scholar tests, and has recommended India’s best high-performance schools for elevation to Ivy League status.   

EducationWorld’s decade-old partnership with the Michigan-based Ravaglia and Launchpad LLC runs deep. Earlier this year in partnership with Launchpad, EducationWorld attained the distinction of publishing India’s first ever rankings survey of America’s best undergrad colleges/universities (see https://educationworld.in/rankings-americas-best-universities-2025/).

Last month we presented league tables featuring 17 Ivy League Day schools selected from among 3,000 Day co-ed, boys and girls, and vintage legacy schools. A feature of the Ivy League league tables is that they comprise all schools under three broad categories — day, boarding and international. Ivy League school tables are not divided into 14 sub-categories such as co-ed, boys and girls as are standard league tables. All are ranked #1 and differentiated by award of stars and grade points to prompt continuous improvement.

Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya’s Nishi Misra: joyous learning satisfaction

Against this backdrop in this October edition we present the EW Ivy League Boarding Schools league table of five outstanding, role model boarding schools comprising the routinely top-ranked co-ed Rishi Valley School, Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh, estb. 1926); the all-boys The Doon School, Dehradun (1935); all-boys Mayo College, Ajmer (1875); co-ed Pinegrove School, Dharampur, Himachal Pradesh (1991); and Chinmaya International Residential School, Coimbatore (1996), and all girls Scindia Kanya Vidyaya, Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh, 1956). Although all these outstanding, globally comparable boarding schools which are role models for private school promoters in India and Afro-Asia countries to emulate, deserve separate interviews, time and editorial bandwidth constraints have ruled out this desideratum. 

Saurav Sinha, the highly qualified (Delhi University, London School of Business) principal of Mayo College, Ajmer, welcomes EW’s Ivy League schools innovation. “It’s an excellent idea to group routinely top-ranked schools in their categories and award them equal recognition and yet provide them opportunities to strive for continuous improvement by improving their parameter scores,” says Sinha who acquired a wealth of business management and administration experience in banking, healthcare, and digital marketing in London, Europe, and Singapore and returned to India to establish the digital business of the Walt Disney Co (India) in 2008, before switching tracks to teach English and economics in top-ranked schools including  Welham Boys, Pathways World School, Gurgaon and as Director (Pastoral Affairs & Boarding) at the newly established (2023) Harrow International School, Bengaluru before being selected after a global search to succeed the formidable Lt. Gen (Retd). S. H. Kulkarni) as principal of Mayo College on February 1, 2024. Since taking charge of this CBSE-affiliated school, Sinha has quickly contemporised it through massive infusion of new technologies and brand-building initiatives.

Sinha is delighted that within this elite schools category Mayo College has been awarded top scores under five (of 14) parameters of boarding school excellence. “Although I am very pleased about the high score awarded by your sample respondents under all parameters, I am specially enthused about the top scores awarded to us under the parameters of sports education and infrastructure. During the year past, we have invested substantial resources in upgrading our sports education and facilities by contracting several former national and international champions to mentor our budding squash, golf and tennis players and also constructing an all-weather Olympics specifications swimming pool. Simultaneously, we have modernized our academic infrastructure by establishing the first AI lab in Indian K-12 education which is in the process of being upgraded into an AI Centre of Excellence. All this has had a positive impact on our students as testified by our top score under the very important parameter of mental and emotional well-being of students,” says Sinha. Currently, the all-boys Mayo College has 860 students mentored by 130 highly-qualified teachers learning and growing on this Ivy League school’s 183-acre green campus.

Quite appropriately, the inaugural league table of boarding schools elevated to Ivy League status also includes the all-girls Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior (SKV, estb. 1956), repeatedly ranked India’s #1 girls boarding school in EWISR for the past three years with highest scores under all parameters of boarding school education excellence. This year under the parameter of infrastructure, SKV which has recently undergone extensive infrastructure upgradation, is awarded a score higher than all except two institutions evaluated in this new elite schools category. Moreover this year’s sample respondents have awarded SKV excellent scores under seven parameters of boarding school excellence.

Nishi Misra, a history postgrad of Allahabad University who acquired valuable teaching and admin experience in St. Mary’s, All Saints and Sherwood College — all in Nainital — and former headmistress of Vidya Devi Jindal School, Hisar, who has been serving as principal of SKV since 2014 and who is widely credited for having transformed this all-girls boarding school into a role model girls boarding school, cautiously welcomes the decision to elevate consistently high-performing schools into an elite Ivy League category. “It’s a good idea to rank all consistently top-ranked schools equally and yet encourage them to continue to strive for improvement under stars and grade points. But removal of Ivy Legue schools from the standard tables could mislead parents and stakeholders to misbelieve that Ivy League schools haven’t been ranked at all,” warns Misra.

Nevertheless despite this anxiety, Misra is pleased that compared with peer Ivy League schools, SKV has been awarded high scores under the parameters of teacher competence (“the cornerstone of education”); co-curricular education and internationalism (“our girls were awarded scholarships valued at Rs.12.56 crore by foreign universities last year”); infrastructure (“totally revamped”) and community service (“we established a sanitary napkins manufacturing unit for neighbouring village girls in 2012”). “The outcome of the SKV board and management’s insistence on providing our girls well-balanced, holistic education supported by enabling infrastructure is our high score under the parameter of emotional and mental well-being services. In SKV our students learn happily in a safe and supportive environment. That’s very satisfying,” says Misra.