To rate and rank the garden city’s most reputable proprietary, franchised and pre-primaries of composite schools, 614 parents, principals and teachers were interviewed by C fore field researchers
In the peninsular garden city of Bangalore/Bengaluru (pop.11 million), fast living up to its ‘garbage city’ image for the inability of the state government and its corrupt municipal corporation to process the 4,000 tonnes of wet and dry garbage the city generates every day, and regulate traffic-choked streets, professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) is a high priority. Before it acquired its recent dubious reputation under the rule of venal rustic politicians with little awareness of the importance of town planning, Bangalore — renamed Bengaluru to pander to rural sub-nationalism — was perhaps the most well-planned and administered city countrywide which with its equable climate, was indeed a garden city. Thus, it attracted a steady flow of foreign investment into its non-polluting IT (information technology) industry with several IT multinationals including Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Dell establishing large back offices in the city. And with Indian IT majors Infosys, TCS and Wipro also striking roots in the city, Bangalore earned itself the reputation of India’s Silicon Valley.
Unsurprisingly, well-educated and well-travelled professionals — particularly in dual income households — employed in the IT industry whose number is estimated at over 1 million, highly value professionally delivered ECCE for their children. Therefore the garden city hosts an estimated 1,500 pre-primary schools of all shapes and sizes at all price points. To rate and rank its most reputable owned/proprietary, franchised and pre-primaries of composite K-10/12 schools across 10 parameters of ECCE excellence, field researchers of C fore interviewed 614 sample respondents comprising 523 parents with children in preschools, and 91 principals, teachers and educationists. Responses of principals of some top-ranked preschools and league tables ranking them inter se in each category are given below.
Owned/Proprietary
Ranked Bangalore’s #1 for three years consecutively (2011-13) and ahead of all pre-primaries of the garden city, the pioneer Head Start Montessori House of Children, Koramangala (HSM, estb.1984) was pipped at the post last year by the mint new Indus Early Learning Centre (IELC), promoted by the management of the upscale Indus International School which has built itself a formidable national reputation by topping the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings in the international day-cum-boarding category for four years in succession. But this year after your editors took the decision to segregate pre-primaries into three categories — owned, franchised and pre-primaries of composite K-10/12 schools — which resulted in IELC migrating to the composite K-12 schools category, HSM has regained its #1 position in the owned/proprietary category.
“I am very happy that the discerning public of Bangalore has appreciated our role in the field of early education. Being ranked #1 on the parameters of special needs education and innovative teaching is very encouraging for our dedicated teachers and staff. I believe the two are connected and mutually reinforcing,” says Samina Mahmood, founder-director of HSM which has an aggregate enrolment of 480 children (two shifts) mentored by 36 teachers and three special educators. In 2004, her son Riad promoted the downstream class I-XI CISCE and CIE (UK)-affiliated Head Start Educational Academy, Sarjapur which has 540 students and 60 teachers on its muster rolls.
Reshma Shrinivas, a science and business management alumna of Bangalore and Sikkim-Manipal universities, and founder-managing director of 10 WeCare preschools in greater Bangalore with over 800 infants mentored by 300 teachers, approves segregation of preschools into separate categories for rating and ranking because owned/proprietary schools tend to be more “quality conscious than franchisee or feeder preschools of composite primary-secondaries and deserve to be evaluated separately”. Since WeCare Learning Pvt. Ltd promoted its first preschool in 2008, the company which sites its preschools in or contiguous to tech parks, has acquired an excellent reputation in India Inc for providing high-quality, professionally administered early childhood care and education. Currently, WeCare preschools are on the preferred list of over 40 blue-chip corporates including EMC, SAP and Tesco for which it runs on-site ECCE centres. Moreover in Hyderabad the company runs Microsoft Inc’s only dedicated ECCE centre worldwide.
“I am delighted that two of our preschools are ranked among the Top 10 in Bangalore in the owned/proprietary category with WeCare, Sarjapur Road ranked #3. This is indicative of widespread parental satisfaction with the care and appropriate, customised education we provide to youngest children. WeCare schools pay great attention to creating joyful learning environments for children in which our teachers give them detailed individual attention. We are very encouraged that your survey ranks WeCare #1 under these parameters,” says Shrinivas.
Franchised preschools
Under the new taxonomy (classification process) adopted to rate and rank Bangalore/Bengaluru’s most admired preschools, only 20 pre/play- schools qualified for ranking in this category. Under the rules drawn up by the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company C fore, which conducted the EW India Preschool Rankings 2015, preschools ranked by fewer than 25 sample respondents were eliminated from the rating and ranking exercise.
Within this category, Bangalore’s top-ranked pre-primary is EuroKids, RMV, Dollar’s Colony (EKRMV) which currently has 275 children (two shifts) and 18 teachers on its muster rolls. Ranked #1 on seven of the 10 parameters of early childhood care and education, EKRMV (estb.2009) is a franchised preschool of the Mumbai-based EuroKids International Pvt. Ltd — India’s largest preschools company with 884 franchisee preschools countrywide.
EKRMV was taken over in 2011 by Mahek Bharat Shah, a young (24) scion of a business family in Bangalore and a management graduate of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Bangalore. Since then, “sparing no money or effort”, Shah has transformed the floundering, previously unranked EKRMV into the garden city’s top-ranked franchised preschool.
“It’s a great feeling to learn that your well-informed sample respondents have ranked EKRMV Bengaluru’s #1 franchised preschool. Five years ago, I took a conscious decision to forsake the family business in commodities and transport to pursue my passion for education. This I did by establishing the largest preschool in the EuroKids India chain. I am especially pleased that EKRMV is ranked #1 on the critical parameter of special needs education. Catering to the needs of children with disabilities was the prime consideration behind my entry into education,” says Shah, who is currently drawing up a blueprint for a K-12 school with special focus on differently abled children.
The new taxonomy adopted for the EW India Preschool Rankings this year has proved particularly beneficial for franchised schools — including the top-ranked EKRMV — which were unranked in the consolidated league tables of yesteryear. Only three franchised preschools — Seed International, OMBR Layout, ranked #17 in 2014 and #2 this year; Tree House, Domlur (18 & 5) and EuroKids, Malleswaram (19 & 18) — ranked this year were ranked in 2014.
Therefore the new categorisation which gives the city’s best franchise preschools due recognition, is warmly welcomed by Rajni Kulkarni, a sociology and economics graduate of Bangalore University who quit a promising corporate career (Accenture, NIIT) for the teaching profession and is currently principal of the Oi (Open Interactive) Playschool, HSR Layout, ranked #3 in this year’s franchised preschools league table.
“The unique feature of Oi Playschools is our dogma that youngest children should learn joyfully through assisted play activities. Therefore we have devised our own Sparks experiential education curriculum which is highly appreciated not only by Indian but also foreign parents with children in our schools,” says Kulkarni. Currently, Oi Playschool (estb.2010) has 51 children mentored by six teachers on its muster rolls.
Pre-Primaries of k-10/12 schools
One of the self-evident realities of pre-collegiate education is that a large and growing number of India’s 320,000 composite primary-secondary private schools have started offering pre-primary/kindergarten education. From the viewpoint of private school managements, it makes good sense to admit infants into pre-primaries which serve as feeders for their main schools as youngest children can be prepared for their own primary classes. For parents as well, admission of children into pre-primaries of composite K-12 schools makes good sense as it eliminates the anxiety and stress of running around for admission into the too-few top-ranked primary-secondary schools at a later stage. And with pre-primaries thus far spared the heavy hand of government regulation — and the unwanted attention of ill-educated school inspectors with perennially itching palms — a rising number of private primary-secondary schools are initiating backward integration into preschool education. 
This is true of the Bangalore-based Indus Trust, promoter of the highly-reputed IBO (Geneva)-affiliated Indus International School (IIS, estb.2003). In 2011, the Indus Trust promoted the Indus Early Learning Centre, Whitefield, which, riding on the reputation of IIS-Bangalore, was ranked #3 among all (unsegregated) preschools of the garden city in 2012 and #1 last year. Unsurprisingly, under the new taxonomy adopted this year, IELC is top ranked in the league table of pre-primaries of composite K-12 schools.
“While I prefer not to comment on the new taxonomy which doesn’t affect our ranking, I am delighted to learn that IELC is ranked #1 on eight of the 10 parameters of preschool excellence. I am especially pleased that we have been top-ranked on the important parameters of teacher competence and teacher welfare and development which underwrite our high scores under all other parameters, particularly innovative teaching, leadership quality, safety and hygiene and special needs education. The Indus Trust has invested heavily in continuous teacher training and development. Our top ranking is the outcome of this focus,” says Linda Bruijnen, an education alumna of Amsterdam University with an international background in teaching and teacher training in Nigeria, the UK, Malaysia and as faculty of the Indus Training and Research Institute, Bangalore, prior to being appointed head of centre at IELC, Whitefield in June this year.
On the other hand, Elizabeth Joseph, a biology and education graduate of Bangalore University who taught at the garden city’s well-reputed Sophia Girls High School for three decades (1981-2010) before being appointed vice principal of the nexgen CISCE and IBO (Geneva)-affiliated Greenwood High International School and principal of the school’s Greenwood High Preschool Activity Centre, Whitefield in 2010, is satisfied with the new taxonomy which eliminates “comparisons between incomparable” pre-primaries. Ranked #20 in 2013 and #9 last year in the unsegregated, composite league tables, Greenwood High Preschool is ranked #4 this year. “The entire credit for our consistently improving rank must be given to our dedicated and committed teachers. Therefore I am pleased to note that we have been awarded high scores under the parameters of teacher competence and teacher welfare and development. The respondents of your survey have correctly noted that in Greenwood High Preschool, we give them substantial creative freedom to innovate and develop their teaching skills,” says Joseph.
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