Since the annual EW India School Rankings were divided into ten separate categories, India’s Top International Day-cum-Boarding Schools 2017-18 league table has been topped by the Indus International School, Bangalore 

Sited on sprawling campuses offering state-of-the-art academic facilities, 5-star student accommodation, elaborate sports and co-curricular education facilities, the country’s small minority of hi-end international day-cum-boarding schools have burst upon the education scene in post-liberalisation India setting globally benchmarked standards for day and boarding school education. Affiliated with prestigious offshore exam boards such as CIE (UK), IB (Geneva) and the Advanced Placement (USA), they have enabled upper middle class parents to access international school education for their children at relatively (compared to private schools abroad) affordable prices.

Since the annual EW India School Rankings were divided into ten separate categories to create level playing fields for comparison, the best international day-cum-boarding school league table has been topped by the Indus International School, Bangalore (IIS-B, estb.2003) with monotonous regularity. This year too, the 12,000-plus sample respondents comprising parents, educationists, principals and teachers have voted the IB and CIE-affiliated IIS-B India’s #1 international day-cum-boarding school. Promoted less than 15 years ago by the Bangalore-based Indus Trust, led by its brilliant strategist CEO Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Arjun Ray, AVSM, PVSM, IIS-B’s two affiliated Indus International schools in Pune and Hyderabad are also ranked #4 and #11 respectively in the 2017-18 league table.

“We are very pleased that our efforts to offer world-class education are being recognised and appreciated by your well-informed sample respondents. Our continued success in the rankings is because we go beyond academics and prepare children for life, setting new benchmarks and standards every year. I am especially happy with our top rating on teacher development and parental involvement as we believe that teachers and parents are the most important stakeholders in student success. Right from the start we have focused intensively on teacher development with our teachers spending close to 60 days every year in training programmes,” says Sarojini Rao, an economics and education alumnus of Pune and Annamalai universities and principal of IIS-B which has an enrolment of 1,100 students and 145 teachers. 

While there’s no change at the top, further down the Top 10 national table of India’s most respected international day-cum-boarding schools there’s been a rejig of the seating order. Two Bangalore schools — The International School Bangalore (TISB) and Greenwood High International (GHI) — have been promoted to #2 position. While TISB has risen a notch from #3 last year, the high-profile GHI has moved up spectacularly in public esteem from #10 in 2016-17 to #2 this year. The ascent of these two institutions has pushed Pathways World School, Aravali, Gurgaon — ranked #2 for the past four years — to #3, a rank it shares with the Genesis Global School (GGS), Noida (#5 in 2016-17). Pathways and GSS are ranked #1 in Delhi NCR.

Promoted in 2009 by the Noida-based Wave Group, with a reported capital investment of Rs.265 crore, the CIE and IB-affiliated GGS has developed into one of the country’s Top 3 international day-cum-boarding schools under the expert guidance of founder director-cum-principal Pramod Sharma, one of India’s most respected and experienced headmasters. “In GSS, we believe that a child never fails; it is the teacher and/or the school which fails her. Therefore our highly qualified teachers concentrate on providing remedial inputs to every child who needs them. Moreover, we are the only school in Delhi NCR to offer a gamut of 21 sports activities and wide range of co-curricular options. Our students have won several national and international robotics championships and participated in Round Square conferences. Recently GGS also won a Rs.20 lakh grant from NITI Aayog to set up an Atal Tinkering Lab,” says Sharma, an alum of Gorakhpur University, who began his teaching career in The Doon School in 1972 and acquired international experience in Afghanistan, Nigeria as also in several reputed primary-secondaries in India including a long stint as principal of the top-table Mayo College, Ajmer before taking charge as the founder-director of GGS in 2009. Currently the K-12 GGS has 1,387 students and 180 teachers on its muster rolls.

Following GGS is Indus International, Pune which has retained its #4 rank of last year and the Canadian International School (CIS), Bangalore at #5. Ranked #12 in 2016-17, CIS has made a dramatic entry into the Top 5 table. “It’s great to receive recognition for all the fantastic things we are doing here at CIS. Each year we go above and beyond the high targets we set ourselves. Our board exam results in the IB Diploma and IGCSE exams are consistently excellent and our graduates are welcomed into top Ivy League universities. I am really pleased with our top rank for internationalism because CIS fulfills all criteria that define a truly international school — over 50 percent of our students and 40 percent of teachers are international. Our goal is to be recognised as one of the best international schools in East Asia,” says Shweta Sastri, a business management graduate of the London School of Economics and executive director of CIS (estb.1996) which has an enrolment of 700 students (including 86 boarders) and 122 teachers. 

Further down the Top 10 table, there are no surprises with Singapore International, Mumbai (#6), Stonehill International, Bangalore (7), KiiT International, Bhubaneswar (8), Jayshree Periwal International, Jaipur (9) and Fravashi Academy, Nashik (10) retaining their seats at the top table.

Although ranked in the second half of the Top 10 table, most of these schools are top-ranked in their states. For instance KiiT International is ranked the #1 day-cum-boarding international school in Odisha (pop.43 million) and Jayshree Periwal International, Jaipur #1 in Rajasthan (pop.68 million). Likewise the Trivandrum International School, ranked #12 nationally, is the #1 day-cum-boarding international school of the southern state of Kerala (pop.34 million).

To view International Day Schools Rankings 2017, please visit: http://www.educationworld.in/rank-school/all-cities/international-school/day-cum-boarding/2017.html