Within the new steel-n-glass city of Gurgaon (Haryana) which has emerged as a 21st-century hub of the IT (information technology), ITES (IT-enabled services) and automobile manufacturing industries, the Blue Bells Group of three CBSE-affiliated primary-secondary schools founded by Dr. Saroj Suman Gulati, has acquired an excellent reputation for providing high-quality K-12 education to the progeny of upwardly mobile employees of over a dozen of India’s top-ranked companies and multinationals which have established subsidiaries and offices in Gurgaon (pop. 877,000), popularly included in Delhi NCR (national capital region).

In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20, Blue Bells Model School, Sector 4 (BBMS-4, estb.1980) is ranked #8 in Gurgaon and Blue Bells Public School, Sector 10 (BBPS-10, estb.2003) is ranked #15 in the 32-strong EW league table of sufficiently well-reputed schools of Gurgaon. The third and latest The Blue Bells School for Integrated Learning, Sector 50 (BBS-50) was inaugurated in August and will admit its first batch in April 2020. The two operational Blue Bells schools in Gurgaon have an aggregate number of 4,500 students and 375 teachers on their musters.

A political science, public administration and teaching alumna of Panjab University with an honorary doctorate conferred by the University of Columbia, USA, Dr. Gulati’s husband Shri Brahm Dutt Gulati worked in the town and country planning department of the Haryana state government. As such, he was often transferred to serve in various districts of the state on different projects. This enabled Dr. Gulati to acquire valuable teaching and admin experience in several K-12 schools of Haryana. Among them: DAV School, Karnal, the Senior Model School, Rohtak, Guru Nanak Public School, Chandigarh. In 1978, she was appointed principal of the Central Academy, Gurgaon. “While I was serving as principal, I became aware that there was an acute shortage of secondary schools of good quality in the fast-growing new city of Gurgaon. Therefore I took the plunge to invest my modest savings of Rs.20,000 and started BBMS-Sector 4 almost four decades ago. But with our reputation for providing globally benchmarked education growing, BBMS-4 moved to a 2.5-acre campus and now this CBSE school has 2,000 children mentored by 175 teachers,” says Dr. Gulati.

With Gurgaon developing into a major ICT and manufacturing hub, in 2003, Dr. Gulati promoted BBPS-10. Established on a leafy green five-acre campus in Gurgaon’s new Sector 10, the CBSE-affiliated, co-ed nursery to class XII Blue Bells Public School, Sector 10 has 2,500 students mentored by 200 teachers on its musters.

“The time gap of 25 years between our first and second school enabled us to learn a lot about new pedagogies and innovations in K-12 education. Therefore, we have been successful in developing BBPS-10 into a thoroughly modern school on an environment-friendly 5-acre campus with excellent co-curricular and sports education facilities to provide holistic education to our boys and girls. Similarly, the Blue Bells School, Sector 50 will be an improvement over our previous schools,” says Dr. Gulati.

In acknowledgment of her entrepreneurial capabilities and determination to provide high-quality education to the public of the newly emergent city of Gurgaon, the Board of Directors and Editors of EducationWorld are pleased to present Dr. Saroj Suman Gulati the EW Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2019 and induct her into the EW Hall of Fame of Indian Education.