In international day-cum-boarding schools, day scholars benefit from the excellent infrastructure and facilities built for boarders and the latter benefit by way of student body diversity. Against 28 schools ranked in this category in 2017, the number has risen to 41 in EWISR 2022-23

IIS-B’s Sarojini Rao & Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray (right)

Within the broad category of international schools, day-cum boarding schools are gaining increasing popularity because they offer students day and boarding options. Day scholars benefit from the excellent infrastructure and facilities built for boarders, and the latter benefit by way of student body diversity. And with a rising number of day-cumboarding schools offering the choice of five-days boarding, they have become the preferred option of nuclear households with working parents.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that the number of international day-cumboarding schools countrywide is rising year on year. Against 28 schools ranked in this category in 2016-17, the number has risen to 41 in EWISR 2022-23.

Since 2013 when international schools were segregated into day, day-cum-boarding and residential, the Indus International School, Bengaluru (IIS-B, estb.2003) has dominated the day-cum-boarding schools league table. This year too, 14,221 sample respondents polled by the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research (C fore) have voted IIS-B India’s #1 international daycum-boarding school with highest score under the parameters of teacher welfare and development, community service, faculty competence, leadership and curriculum and pedagogy (hybrid learning readiness).

“We are delighted we are ranked India’s #1 international day-cumboarding school for the 11th consecutive year in the authoritative EW India School Rankings. This is the outcome of our sustained effort to reinvent and transform K-12 education by integrating latest digital technologies, contemporary pedagogies and new knowledge into the school curriculum. Some of our innovations include introduction of a collaborative learning model; employment of robots as teaching assistants in classrooms; and designing a unique entrepreneurial skills development curriculum. Moreover, we are currently piloting a unique 10x International School initiative for classes IX-XII under which the curriculum is delivered in blended format through utilisation of latest digital technologies. All these initiatives are driven by our teachers who voluntarily sign up for professional training and selfdevelopment programmes. We value them very highly as is evidenced by IIS-B’s #1 rank under the parameter of teacher welfare and development across all international schools,” says Sarojini Rao, an economics and education alumna of Pune and Annamalai universities and principal of IIS-B since 2005.