On every metric the three-day EW India School Rankings Awards 2024-25 conclave staged in the 7-star Leela Ambience Hotel, Gurgaon, Delhi NCR, which concluded on October 19, was a resounding success. This conclave was the follow-up of the EducationWorld India School Rankings Survey 2024-25 — the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey which rated and ranked over 4,000 primary-secondary schools in 458 cities and towns countrywide under three main and 14 sub-categories (to eliminate apples with oranges type comparisons) under 14 parameters of school excellence.

However, this year Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Arjun Ray, PVSM, VSM, Chief Executive of the invariably top-ranked Indus International School, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune — who regularly led a large delegation to the annual EWISR Awards — was conspicuously absent. Perhaps because IIS-Bangalore, hitherto ranked India’s #1 international day-cum-boarding school for 13 years consecutively, and other IIS institutions ranked among the Top 10, failed to replicate the feat. This year IIS-Bangalore was demoted to #3, below The International School, Bangalore, Pathways World School, Gurgaon and Lancers International, Gurgaon.

Despite his brilliant record in the Indian Army and ideating and establishing four high-end IB-affiliated internationally benchmarked K-12 schools, Ray is reportedly sulking in his tent because IIS-Bangalore has been toppled from its customary premier rank. Perhaps this setback is not unconnected with this year’s survey not being conducted by the Delhi-based market research firm C fore whose CEO, Premchand Palety, a routine visitor to the IIS-B campus in the garden city. This year’s 8,700 sample respondents interviewed by AZ Research Partners, Bangalore decisively favoured perennial bridesmaid TISB as numero uno by a wide margin. Back at the EWISR Awards event, there was disappointment that delegates were denied the general’s annual sermon.

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