Delhi's RPVVS: Elite Education For The City's Poor

With the best teachers and facilities, students of the 22 Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalayas have been winning awards in international competitions…

- Abhay Anand

Most states run some schools they are proud to showcase – they get the best teachers, are well-funded and some even select their students. Delhi has the Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalayas or RPVVs. While many of the state’s schools struggle to keep attendance up, the RPVVs routinely post stellar results in the CBSE’s Class 10 and 12 exams.

“I joined RPVV Civil Lines in Class 9 and within a few months I started experiencing a change in me as the teaching style, my classmates and the school environment were all very different from my previous school,” says Ashish Angel, a Class 12 student. He was selected to represent India in the Physics Olympiad held in Moscow this year.

Like Angel, Harshita Roy and Satyam, both twelfth graders at RPVV Sector 10, Dwarka, participated in the 4th International Olympiad of Metropolises in Moscow in September. In a first for Delhi’s government schools, they won a bronze medal in chemistry. But this is not the first generation to succeed. As Bhagwati Swarup Aggarwal, principal RPVV Surajmal Vihar pointed out, the school’s alumnus, Abhinav Rohila was in the core team for Chandrayaan-2, India’s second lunar mission.

The origin

Every year a large number of students from the RPVVs are selected for admission by top engineering and medical colleges. Many of its alumni have gone on to join the administrative services, defense services and occupy positions of responsibility in India and abroad.

Aggarwal adds: “Many of my students are from poor, marginalized families but there is no dearth of talent or determination. This year, seven of my students secured admission in medical colleges and two students in the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.”