RN Podar School, Santacruz, Mumbai

RN Podar School

Founded in 1998, Ramniranjan Podar School (RNPS), Santacruz is the CBSE-affiliated school of the Mumbai-based Podar Education Network (estb. 1927), administered by the Anandilal Podar Trust whose first president was Mahatma Gandhi. Currently, the Podar group comprises 124 education institutions concentrated in western (Maharashtra, Gujarat), central (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh) and southern (Karnataka) India.

Clustered in Mumbai’s affluent suburb of Santacruz with several Podar Group schools — Lilavatibai Podar Sr. Secondary School (affiliated with CISCE), Podar International School (IB) and Podar International School (SSC) — is the 2.9-acre campus of RNPS, a class I-XII co-ed day school affiliated with CBSE since 2000, which has over the past two decades acquired an excellent reputation in Mumbai for delivering holistic education to its 2,647 students through innovative use of technology. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20, RNPS, Santacruz is ranked among the country’s Top 10 (#10) co-ed day schools, #4 in Maharashtra and #2 in Mumbai West (Vile Parle to Dadar). The school is also ranked #1 in Mumbai West for teacher competence, welfare, leadership, life skills, internationalism and community service.

RNPS which has an enrolment of 2, 647 students mentored by 101 teachers, offers excellent supportive infrastructure including 48 fully wired classrooms equipped with Smart boards, seven state-of-the-art physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and computer science labs and a well- stocked library with more than 16,000 titles.

Co-curricular education groups and clubs (public speaking, dance, music, quiz etc) are encouraged as are life skills and community service. Sports facilities are provided for tennis, athletics, badminton, basketball, football, kho-kho, table tennis, volleyball, chess, handball, aerobics and cricket.

Moreover, RNPS was the first in the country to pilot the online teaching model introduced by Khan Academy and formally implement the ‘flipped learning model’. The school’s innovative teaching-learning practices have been case studies for Google for Education (2011) and IIM- Ahmedabad (2012).

Unsurprisingly, RNPS students have been performing consistently well in board examinations. In 2019, 203 of the 273 students who wrote the class X CBSE boards and 176 of the 430 students who wrote the class XII CBSE exam averaged 90 percent-plus. RNPS graduates have been routinely admitted into top-ranked foreign universities (Harvard Kennedy, Yale and Carnegie Mellon University) and Indian universities including Ashoka, Delhi University and the IITs.

Among the school’s prominent alumni are IFS officer Dhananjay Singh, entrepreneur Ankiti Bose, CEO of fashion start-up Zilingo and author Aditya Shroff.