This issue of EducationWorld marks the culmination of several months of mountainous labour in our Bangalore and Mumbai offices. The EW team has been burning the proverbial midnight oil compiling, checking and rechecking the EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2024-25 league tables published in our September and current issue.
When school leaders, advertisers and sponsors are informed that the annual EWISR is the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey, their eyes tend to glaze and the subject is swiftly changed. Yet the plain truth is that the entire process kick-started by our new field research agency — AZ Research Partners who stepped into the breach after our long-standing research partner C fore abruptly terminated our contract (further comment is proscribed as the issue is sub judice) — initiating one-on-one interviews with 8,700 sample respondents (educationists, principals, teachers and parents) countrywide and ending with the editorial team finalising the EWISR league tables which rank day, boarding and international schools divided into 14 sub-categories under 14 parameters of primary-secondary education excellence, spanned almost six months. Strenuous additional effort was simultaneously invested by our marketing and sales office personnel in Mumbai to alert and provide opportunity to advertisers and sponsors to participate in our follow-up EWISR Awards event scheduled to be staged in Gurgaon, Delhi NCR on October 17-19 when leaders of India’s top-ranked schools will be felicitated and celebrated.
Yet we believe this monumental institutional application and effort involved in publishing the annual EWISR is time well spent. Because the 4,000 (out of 1.6 million) schools ranked in the EWISR league tables are engaged in providing model nation-building service to the public. We don’t subscribe to the cynical opinion of cribber socialists and armchair critics that promoters, principals and managements of private schools that dominate the league tables, are solely — or substantially — driven by the profit motive.
Numerous other options are available to capital-accumulation driven entrepreneurs and education professionals. Individuals who choose to promote and manage schools and education institutions are necessarily driven by high degree of idealism and nation-building objectives. It was national negligence that schools were not sufficiently assessed and achievements of their teachers and managements not celebrated until EducationWorld initiated its annual EWISR two decades ago.
We are proud and unapologetic about this initiative. It has generated great enthusiasm — and friendly inter-school competition — countrywide. Only good can flow from it. Even though several pretender publications and organisations with less credibility and commitment towards “building the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, have also begun printing and publishing slap-dash plagiarised versions of the annual EWISR. As our cover depicts, eagles fly high above.