Mother's International, New Delhi

What makes this school exert such an influence on those touched by it? "Because we believe in addressing the soul," says principal Marukh Singh. The question then is: how do you groom students for life rather than careers? How do you tell them it’s more important to be a sentient human being than a motivated certificate/trophy/medal seeker? Not that competition is taboo, Mother’s also has the distinction of producing a Junior KBC winner and winning itself an Intel computer lab, among other inter-school trophies.

At the school’s spacious play fields, commodious classrooms and labs, the acquisition of knowledge has a higher purpose—the school houses here go by names such as Gratitude, Honesty, Perfection and Truth. The challenge though is to achieve it through a CBSE syllabus as junior school is examination-free. Over here, Home Science classes have more boys; the positive personality awards are more prestigious than the usual academic decorations; the labs are not about mysterious titrations and dour measurements but some wonderful applications of science.