The annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR), which rates and ranks the country’s Top 1,000 primary-secondary schools, is the world’s largest school rankings survey. To compile the 13-plus league tables of the EW India School Rankings 2018-19, 120 field personnel of the Delhi-based market research company Centre for Forecasting & Research (C fore) interviewed 12,000 sample educationists, principals, teachers and senior students countrywide and persuaded them to rate schools in 14 categories (to avoid apples and oranges comparisons) on 14 parameters of education excellence including faculty competence, academic reputation, infrastructure, etc. The EWISR 2018-19 league tables spread over 300 pages were published last September.
Although EWISR 2018-19 also provides state and city rankings, national rankings are given pride of place in this annual exercise initiated in 2007. Yet national rankings are of limited interest to parents and students in India’s 29 states and seven Union territories, most of which are larger and more populous than most European countries. City and state rankings in that order are of greater import, especially for stakeholders in day schools.
Therefore to mine the huge volume of valuable data contained within EWISR 2018-19, we have constituted a special analytics task force to highlight the large and growing number of primary-secondary schools in India’s major states starting with the Hindi belt states of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
The ‘Heart of India’ state of Madhya Pradesh (pop.73 million) is India’s second largest (308,252 sq. km) state by area after Rajasthan. MP’s economy is primarily dependent on agriculture which (under) employs 70 percent of the working population. However, the state is rich in mineral resources and industrial growth is accelerating at 22 percent per year with the cities of Indore and Bhopal emerging as major hubs of business and commerce.
MP also hosts some excellent legacy boarding schools such as the all-boys Scindia and Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya in Gwalior even as nexgen private schools are being promoted in the state’s administrative capital Bhopal and the tier II-III cities of Indore, Jabalpur and Gwalior to meet growing demand for high-quality education from aspirational middle class households.
Although the per capita income (Rs.59,000 per year) of Madhya Pradesh is less than the national income per capita (Rs.126,406), the state is a major producer of soyabean, sugarcane, rice and cotton. Moreover this minerals-rich (copper, diamonds, forests) state hosts several hubs of industry in Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur.
In the pages following, we present league tables of Madhya Pradesh’s top-ranked co-ed day, girls day, boys day, international day, day-cum-boarding, boys boarding and girls boarding schools as well as a special league table of MP’s Top 3 day schools on 14 parameters of K-12 education excellence.
The Shishukunj International School, Indore
