Carmel Junior College

Jamshedpur, Jam. 27: Barely a year after it was judged the best school in the city by a panel for the Dr J.J. Irani Excellence award in Education, Carmel Junior College (CJC) has gone ahead to grab yet another title — that of the best school in the country.

The panel to judge CJC as the winner this time was the Indian Merchants’ Chamber (IMC) Ramakrishna Bajaj National Quality Award 2007.

The school bagged the special award and a high score of 721 out of 1,000, making it the best.

Schools that follow CJC are Mumbai and Gurgaon institutions. In the higher education category, the award went to Manipal University in Karnataka. Established in 1996, the IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award was instituted to give recognition to excellence in organisations — but quality practices in education and healthcare, too, is a prominent aspect of the awards.

“It’s a happy moment for us. A score of 721 out of 1,000 is also unbelievable,” said Sister Flavian, the principal of CJC.

Bajaj awards judged schools according to the Malcom Balridge Criteria of quality in education. “We knew we could do better when last year the school was declared the best in the city for the JJ Irani award. We decide to go in for the national-level recognition and I am glad that the high-level jury panel and assessor liked us from the word go,” added Sister Flavian.

All this the achool has managed to acheive in a span of 10 years completed in March 2008. “After we had applied for the award, a two-member Mumbai team visited us in November 2007 to check our style o functioning. That was followed by one more visit,” she added.

Some aspects which came under the scanner were the school’s learning and teaching processes, the infrastructure, level of supervision, code of conduct and its vision.

The feedback letter, which the Bajaj foundation handed over to the school, reads: “The applicant (CJC) demonstrates refined approaches, responsive to the multiple requirements of the items. These approaches are characterised by the use of key measures and good deployment. The organisation is an industry leader in some areas.”

And having bagged the national position, the next step for the school is the Asia-Pacific region, where the school is slated to compete with 22 countries and institutions in those countries.

“Now that we have received this award we will soon apply for the Asia Pacific one,” she added.

Some of the school characteristics that helped it to score brownie points were its multi-layered review of the students, its simple communication mechanism aimed at all students and the way it lets its senior students act as role models for the juniors.