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is not available to crores of young children, particularly ‘A’ parents with at least one child in preschool, teachers,
children from socio-economically disadvantaged back- and principals of various pre-primary schools. Every
grounds. Strong investment in ECCE has the potential respondent was shown a list of high-profile preschools
to give all young children such access, enabling them in their city. They were requested to rate preschools they
to participate and flourish in the educational system were aware of on a ten-point scale under ten parameters
throughout their lives. Universal provisioning of quality of pre-primary education excellence. These parameters
early childhood development, care, and education must are competence of faculty, teacher welfare and develop-
thus be achieved as soon as possible, and no later than ment, curriculum and pedagogy, infrastructure, indi-
2030, to ensure that all students entering grade 1 are vidual attention to students, value for money, leadership/
school ready,” says NEP 2020, echoing advocacy consis- management quality, parental involvement, special needs
tently advanced by EducationWorld. education and safety and hygiene. Schools assessed by
To maintain EducationWorld’s established tradition less than 25 respondents were not considered for ranking.
of rating the country’s best preschools for the benefit of The scores awarded by sample respondents were multi-
parents with young children — and teachers aspiring to plied by ten and totaled to rank preschools in the selected
make careers in ECCE — we commissioned our long- 17 cities,” says Premchand Palety, promoter-CEO of
standing partner, Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. C fore. An alumnus of the Panjab Engineering College,
Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), the well-reputed Delhi-based Chandigarh, Palety served in ORG, India’s pioneer retail
market research and opinion polls company to conduct a market research firm for over a decade prior to promot-
field research survey in 17 cities (where there is sufficient ing C fore in the millennium year. C fore’s clients include
awareness of the importance of pre-primary educa- Nestle, Mint and the Congress party.
tion) viz, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, In the following pages, we present parameter scores
Hyderabad, Pune, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Ahmedabad, and league tables ranking Top 10-20 pre-primary schools
Chandigarh, Jaipur, Gurugram, Noida, Bhubaneswar, in proprietary and franchised categories in 17 cities coun-
and Ghaziabad. trywide.
“In all, 8,173 people were interviewed. Sample re-
spondents consisted of SEC (socio-economic category) With Paromita Sengupta, Reshma Ravishanker & Baishali Mukherjee

december 2023 educationworld 43