It’s here! The biggest EW issue of the year. From the blank-eyed stares one gets, there is little awareness or appreciation that since 2007 when the annual Education India School Rankings (EWISR) survey was introduced, it has evolved into the largest, deepest and most comprehensive primary-secondary schools rating and rankings survey worldwide.
Unlike most surveys ranking education institutions which are conducted by a jury of eminent educationists over tea and biscuits in a closed room, EWISR is an expansive field-based survey. Given that the total number of schools in India aggregates 1.4 million, selected jurors have little knowledge of the schools beyond their parishes. Your editors have chosen the hard, and more expensive, option of conducting field surveys in which 15,000-18,000 knowledgeable sample respondents — a mix of educationists, principals, teachers, parents and senior students— are persuaded to rate schools in their region (east, west, north and south) on 14 parameters of school education on a scale of 1-100. The scores awarded by sample respondents under each parameter are totalled and schools ranked in their own categories (co-ed day, day-cum-boarding, all boys and all girls etc) to provide an even playing field for comparison. Thus an estimated 4,000 of India’s most admired schools are ranked nationally, in the states and over 400 cities and towns nationwide.
It’s a laborious, time-consuming process requiring alignment of scores under 14 parameters to provide readers detailed parameter, city, states and countrywide scores and ranks requiring our partner — the Centre for Forecasting & Research (C fore, estb.2000), the reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company — to deploy field personnel to interview 18,928 sample respondents countrywide. Subsequently our entire editorial team in Bangalore led by Managing Editor Summiya Yasmeen checks, reconciles data and aligns national, state and city/town rankings.
Nevertheless, there’s no shortage of cribbers and nitpickers ready to find fault with the annual EWISR. They forget that prior to the launch of EW, schools, principals — and education itself — received minimal media coverage, at best confined to tiny snippets in newspapers. Some schools have written to us expressing the wish to ‘withdraw’ from the survey. This request has been denied because we believe it is our fundamental right to rate and rank education institutions open to the public, in a fair and transparent manner.
Be that as it may, EWISR 2023-24 has provoked tremendous enthusiasm as reported in the pages following. Moreover, we look forward to welcoming principals and representatives of all Top 20 ranked schools to our EWISR 2023-24 Awards conclave in Delhi’s Aero City on October 13-14, for which the response from India and abroad has been overwhelming. Please note advance registration (www. educationworld.in) for attendance is necessary.
Meanwhile we invite all educators and public-spirited citizens to make common cause with us in our mission to make education the #1 item on the national development agenda.
