Promoted in 1991 by businessman and philanthropist, Niranjanlal Dalmia, NLDHS is ranked among top dozen co-ed day schools of Maharashtra in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2020-21, writes Dipta Joshi Located in Mumbai’s satellite city of Thane, over the past three decades, N.L. Dalmia High School (NLDHS, estb.1991) has acquired a good reputation for providing holistic values-based English-medium education in a conducive teaching-learning environment. Affiliated with the Delhi-based Council of the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), this co-ed day school offers K-12 education to 3,000 students mentored by 152 teachers. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2020-21, NLDHS is ranked #12 in Maharashtra (pop.112 million) and #2 in Thane district. Moreover, the school was also awarded a special prize for social impact by an EW Grand Jury. Promoted by the N.L. Dalmia Educational Society (NLDES, estb.1982), NLDHS is the outcome of founder-chairman Niranjanlal Dalmia’s vision to provide education to serve the public. An alumnus of Hindu College, Delhi freedom fighter, and businessman-philanthropist, Dalmia (1915-2005) articulated the school’s mission as providing quality English-medium education enabled by world-class infrastructure to nurture the innate potential of children and develop global citizens with Indian values. Since then, the society has added two more institutions — the N.L. Dalmia Institute of Management Studies and Research (estb.1995) and the N.L. Dalmia College of Arts, Commerce and Science (2018). Together they educate 4,500 children and youth. “The motto of our school — ‘In Pursuit of Excellence’ — encapsulates our founder’s belief that high quality education awakens the innate potential of all children,” says Seema Saini, an alumna of Mumbai University and Xavier University, USA. Former head of the economics department, APS-Eicher Good Earth Foundation, Alwar and former HRD director of N.L. Dalmia Educational Society, Saini was appointed principal of NLDHS in 2009 and CEO of NLDES in 2016. Spread over 1.21 acres, the school’s capital-intensive infrastructure has been consistently upgraded to international standards. All 55 classrooms in its six-storey main block are equipped with interactive smart boards integrating latest digital technologies to improve the learning experience of students. The classrooms are also STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) ready. Moreover, teacher training and professional development is an important priority of the NLDHS management. An outstanding feature of the compact NLDHS campus is the heavy investment the school’s promoters/management has made in enabling infrastructure. Its 55 fully-wired classrooms apart, the school offers students access to three science and two computer labs, a fully-equipped conference room, a human resource development centre to provide continuous training and development programmes for teachers and admin staff and a multi-activity hall for co-curricular music, yoga, dance and art education. The school also boasts four seminar halls with an aggregate seating capacity of 688 and an auditorium with equivalent capacity. Moreover, the library houses 14,600 print volumes and 72 computer terminals for online reading and connectivity. This enabling learning environment for students and faculty and ready acceptance of teaching-learning innovations such as flipped classrooms, group discussions, Socratic questioning, role play, peer learning,…
