Vidya Devi Jindal School

Teaching covers Grades IV to XII and is divided into four sections. The Primary section takes Grades IV and V, when girls usually start boarding; the Middle section covers Grades VI to VIII; the Secondary section is Grades IX and X, ending with the CBSE board examination; and the Senior Secondary section covers Grades XI and XII, where girls choose from more than twenty subject courses and prepare for university entrance. Sections normally hold 25 to 30 girls. An Academic Support Centre, a Special Educational Needs department and a career counselling team work across all four sections.

The school's Sanskrit motto translates as the idea that the light of knowledge is the light of life, and the founding trust set out to build a society in which women and men advance on equal terms. Education is presented as a journey towards personhood rather than a race for marks, resting on mental wellbeing, universal ethics and curiosity. The model of learning and leadership covers five areas of a girl's development: emotional, mental, physical, social and spiritual.

The school occupies a campus of around 47 acres on Delhi Road, laid out with an academic block, four boarding houses, a cafeteria, a dining hall and a guest house for visiting families. The wellness centre looks after day-to-day health needs. Indoor sport is served by a fitness centre, a shooting range and a multipurpose hall used for badminton and table tennis. Outdoors the school lists an Olympic-size swimming pool, a skating rink, several synthetic basketball, volleyball and tennis courts, a grass hockey field, a soccer ground, a 400-metre athletics track and dedicated areas for archery, taekwondo and yoga.

Because the school is fully residential, support runs around the clock. The dining hall serves a purely vegetarian menu and there is also a cafeteria. A wellness centre and a medical team look after health, while mentors, dorm parents and a counselling team provide pastoral care. A Special Educational Needs department supports pupils who need it, and life-skills and career counselling guide senior girls on subject choices and university applications. Scholarships are awarded to pupils who excel academically or in sport, including entrants to Class XI, under a published policy.

The school is fully residential. Its 700 pupils live in four boarding houses, Kasturba, Laxmibai, Sarojini and Savitri, with about 175 girls in each. The houses are air-conditioned and furnished with common rooms, games rooms, a meditation room, a study hall and internet access. Each house has accommodation attached for the housemistress and resident housemistress, and dorm parents and support staff also live in. Together with mentors, the counselling team, the medical team and domestic staff, they provide supervision at all hours. The school says girls generally settle into boarding more easily when they start early, which is why the youngest boarders join in Grade IV.

Sport is part of daily boarding life and teams compete well beyond Haryana: girls have taken part in the SGFI national hockey and volleyball championships and in the sporting and cultural calendar of the IPSC network. Facilities support swimming, athletics, basketball, volleyball, tennis, hockey, football, skating, archery, taekwondo, yoga, badminton and table tennis. The Learning Beyond the Classroom programme gives every girl a structured hobby, with options this session including digital design, apparel design, crochet, knitting, basket weaving and Kathak dance.