Were IITians toppers in primary and secondary classes too?

This post has been taken from one of my Quora answers (link): 

I was born and brought up in the city of Kanpur
Kanpur does not have a decent academic background. Most of the people here are illiterate.

I joined a school near to my home. It was an average school and I was a not so good student.
I remember getting 7th rank in class 1st and 13th rank in class 2nd.
In class 3rd, a new section was created and I don't know how, but I managed to get 1st rank. The same continued in class 4th. However, I became over confident in class 5th and I got 8th rank.
Seeing my academic potential, my mother wanted me to get admitted to Dr. VSEC, (probably) the best school in Kanpur.
Now comes the big deal
In the admission interview, the principal told my mother:

Getting a top 10 rank in an ordinary school is no big deal. Let's see how he fares in our school

Well, to my surprise, I ended up with some 70 % marks in class 6th, standing 23rd in my section (there were 3 other sections).
I was very disappointed. I did not take any coaching/tuition. My elder sister used to teach me.
I wasn't much into academics at that time.
However, slowly and steadily, I progressed getting 13th rank in class 7th followed by 6th rank in class 8th.
Next comes class 9th.
I remember in the first term exams, I got 4th rank and missed the first rank by just 7 marks out of 1100.
That was it.
I worked hard day in and day out and managed to top all 4 sections by a margin of 14 marks right in the second term examinations. Since then I never looked back, I kept on moving.
Class 10th board exams result: 97.4%, topped my school.
My mother went with me to principal madam and she told her:

You had told my son on the interview day that topping in an ordinary school was easy, but by your blessings and his hard work, he topped your school as well.

Well, but this victory was not a victory for me.
I was ranked 3rd in the city and the topper was just 2 marks ahead of me.
Why ? Because I made a silly mistake in the mathematics exam. The question demanded calculation of simple interest and I took the time to be 1 year instead of 2 years.

Never mind.
I started my JEE preparation soon after class 10th.
The city topper guy (who is not a good friend of mine) was also in my batch.
The toppers of all major schools were in the same batch as that of mine.

Learning from my mistakes, working hard and being patient finally worked out.
June 21st, 2013: JEE Advanced results announced and I got an All India Rank of 33 :)