Dear Readers,

Everyone loves a ranking list. The top 10 restaurants in town. The top 50 hotels in the world. The top 100 cleanest cities in India. We recently came to know that the CS Academy Schools in Erode and in Coimbatore are ranked by Education Today as the number 1 schools in their respective cities for the year 2024. However, people fail to ask fundamental questions about rankings – What are the criteria used? How relevant are they? Was the research done properly without bias? What is the motive of the ranking agency? This is especially relevant when it comes to school education as assessing quality at a school level is quite difficult. Often, because we do not have access to the data that matters, we substitute easily assessed proxies for quality of education – a great looking reception desk, marble on the floor, AC classrooms and so on. And by focusing on these proxy measures, very often parents realize too late that their child lags in the fundamental areas that really matter.

Assessing school quality: There are three broad factors to consider while assessing the quality of the school:

1. The degree of achievement of the students and to what extent the school plays a role in that. Every student must be able to realize her potential and should not be held back because of shortcomings in the programmes offered. Most schools have some students who excel, but the key point is to check the average and median scores achieved at an overall level. University admission offers at top colleges is another key indicator of success, especially for ones that focus on all round development. The student peer group matters too, as motivated and positive students tend to create an atmosphere for achievement.

2. The engagement and wellbeing of the students at school. How happy, excited and challenged are they at school? Safety and pastoral care are key components that are a requirement for success. However, it is easy to run a lax programme that is easy for students, but eventually the lack of achievement and skill development will start showing significant and hard to bridge gaps in student capability. The top schools challenge students to achieve their best, work hard and develop an excellent work ethic, without pressurizing them, thus striking a balance.

3. The choice, extent and quality of programmes offered outside the classrooms, especially towards skill development. Schools should serve as a place where students discover what they are good at and then build on those skills overtime. The long-term success of the new generation of students is based on building a robust skill set that can be used in many walks of life. Schools must serve as the starting point for identifying and nurturing those interests.

At CS, we have always held ourselves to the above three measures of quality, striving to improve our outcomes year on year. A key contributor to the outcomes we achieve is the strong support we have from our parent body and I would like to thank each one of them for their role in making CS Academy one of the top schools in the region.