The annual winter stampede for admissions into this city-state’s most admired pre-primaries is the most frantic and brutal nationwide, with parents ready and willing to brave near zero temperatures for obtaining admission forms
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No city, town or community nationwide is more aware of the vital importance of professionally administered early childhood care and education than Delhi (pop.18.25 million), a sprawling megalopolis which has not only been awarded the status of a state of the Indian Union but whose reach under the name and style of Delhi NCR (National Capital Region) stretches across two other states — Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The annual winter stampede for admissions into the city-state’s most admired pre-primaries is the most frantic and brutal nationwide with overnight queues — quite common and ubiquitous — formed by parents ready and willing to brave near-zero night temperatures to obtain the all-important admission forms for their infants.
This annual and under-reported phenomenon is unsurprising because admission into the national capital’s top-ranked pre-primaries — especially pre-primaries of the city’s most reputed K-12 schools — is the passport for entry into Delhi’s much-too-few premier schools, which eliminates the subsequent scramble for admissions into them for the next 12 years. Little wonder the mad annual rush for preschool admissions in the Delhi imperium.
Against this backdrop, field researchers of the highly-reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company C fore interviewed a select sample of 602 parents with children in preschool, principals and teachers in Delhi, and persuaded them to rate and rank 13 owned/proprietary, 29 franchised and 13 preschools attached to larger K-10/12 schools separately in these three categories.
Owned/proprietary preschools
For the past six years since this publication began rating and ranking the country’s best pre-primaries in the public interest, The Magic Years (TMY), the national capital’s pioneer preschool, has been voted Delhi’s #1. Therefore there was a certain inevitability that under the new taxonomy, which ranked owned/proprietary nurseries separately, TMY would retain its pre-eminent position.
True to expectation, TMY is ranked Delhi’s #1 owned/proprietary preschool and first in six out of the 10 parameters which denote pre-primary education excellence. However, it’s pertinent to note that a mere one point separates it from the national capital’s Step by Step, Panchsheel which is rated #1 on the parameters of teacher welfare and development, parental involvement, infrastructure and special needs education. Little Pearls, Vasant Vihar which has retained its #3 rank, The Ardee Montessori, Sujan Singh Park (#4) and Aadyant, Vasant Kunj make up the Top 5 table this year.
“The EducationWorld annual rankings based on a wide set of parameters, impact the importance of early childhood care and education upon the community and prompt improvement across the board. We enjoy the rewards of recognition by media, the educational community, parents and mostly from children who inspire us to give our best every day. At TMY we are responsive to our children’s social and emotional needs and help them develop into independent, well-balanced individuals. To this end, we spare no effort or resources to continuously make advances in the fields of teaching, play and sports, nutrition, safety and hygiene, creativity and spotting talent early,” says Shirley Madhavan Kutty, the promoter principal of TMY (estb.1984) which has 225 children and 40 teachers on its muster rolls.
But while Madhavan Kutty is appreciative of the “rewards of recognition by the media”, Ramani Chopra, principal of Step by Step, Panchsheel jointly ranked #1 in 2014 and second by a whisker this year, evidently doesn’t appreciate media attention. “We do our job to the best of our ability and go home. The high rank awarded to Step by Step is encouraging and motivational for our teachers and students. Therefore I wish your magazine and its management well and thank you for the good overall rank and high rating accorded on several parameters. However #1 or #2 ranking doesn’t matter to us. We do our best irrespective of rankings and don’t bother about numbers,” Chopra informed EW’s Delhi correspondent Autar Nehru. Nevertheless, it’s widely known in Delhi and beyond, that Step by Step excels in providing excellent education to special needs children and is rated #1 on this parameter by a wide margin.
Most proprietary preschools in the national capital have benefited from adoption of the new taxonomy. Aadyant, Vasant Kunj ranked #7 last year is ranked #5. Tender Feet, Vasant Kunj has leapfrogged from #16 to 7, The Study, East of Kailash from #17 to 11, and Santa Maria Integrated Learning Environment from #17 to 12. The only exceptions are The Learning Tree, Sujan Singh Park and Shishuvan, Vasant Kunj which are ranked lower than last year.
Franchised preschools
Unlike proprietary preschools to whom the new taxonomy adopted for rating and ranking them this year hasn’t made much difference, segregation of pre-primaries into three mutually exclusive categories has changed the fortunes of franchised schools in Delhi. Most of them — including Kangaroo Kids, New Friends Colony ranked #1 in this discrete category — were unranked in 2014 when the Delhi league table was dominated by proprietary pre-primaries. This year, 29 franchisee schools of well-known franchisor companies in early childhood care and education are ranked in this category. 
Maneka Sharma, director-principal of the previously unranked Kangaroo Kids, New Friends Colony (KKNFC, estb.2011), which has leapfrogged to the very top of Delhi’s franchised preschools league table this year under the new classified system, is gratified by the morale boost received by KKNFC’s teachers, parents and pupils. “The new system which ranks pre-primaries with different features and ownership separately, is desirable because it clubs them together for evaluation purposes. Therefore I am delighted that under this fair and rational assessment system, our own opinion of KKNFC has been endorsed by the knowledgeable respondents of your survey. Our #1 ranking and #1 ratings across all 10 parameters will motivate us to work harder to retain our premier position next year,” says Sharma, an education and law alumna of the Chaudhury Charan Singh University, Meerut.
Likewise Anubha Mathur, principal of EuroKids, E Block, Greater Kailash II is also enthused by the new taxonomy which has catapulted it from #14 in last year’s undivided preschools league table to #2 in 2015. “I wholly approve of your initiative of ranking pre-primaries with different characteristics separately. This enables fair comparisons in each category. I am delighted that under the new rating and ranking system, we have been compared with franchised preschools, although strictly speaking we are a EuroKids owned and operated preschool. Nevertheless, the distinguishing features of all EuroKids preschools is our thoroughly modern curriculums, high attention to teacher training and development, parental involvement in the education process and individual attention to each child,” says Mathur, a psychology graduate of Indraprastha University who signed up as principal with EKGKII in 2006.
Preschools of K-10/12 schools
Rated and ranked for the first time under the new taxonomy adopted by your editors to eliminate apples and oranges type of across the board comparisons of preschools, the feeder pre-primaries of K-10/12 schools are widely perceived to be as good as their parent schools. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the inaugural league table of pre-primaries attached or affiliated with composite schools is scarcely different from the league tables of primary-secondary schools which topped the EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) published three months ago (September).
Therefore Delhi’s top-ranked pre-primary in this category this year is The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar, the junior school (K-class V) of The Shri Ram School, Delhi, ranked India’s #2 and Delhi’s #1 primary-secondary school in EWISR 2015. Rated #1 on seven of the 10 parameters of preschool excellence, TSRS(J) heads a 13-strong category table followed by the preschools of Vasant Valley, Sanskriti, Chanakyapuri, The Mother’s International School, Springdales, Dhaula Kuan and DPS, R.K. Puram.
“The Shri Ram Junior School is deserving of its recognition as Delhi’s #1 pre-primary in this competitive category. As indicated in our top scores under each parameter, our focus areas are teacher welfare and development, close partnership with parents and individual attention to each child. In this connection, I must also state that the lofty vision of our founder chairperson the late Mrs. Manju Bharatram, and now Arun Bharatram who have made huge contributions to pre-primary and K-12 education in Delhi, has contributed to our pre-eminent ranking,” says Pooja Manan Thakur, an alumna of Delhi University who began her teaching career with the Spastics Society of North India (since renamed Action for Development & Inclusion), and acquired extensive teaching experience at The Shri Ram School for 15 years prior to being appointed principal of TSRS (J) (estb.1988) which has an aggregate enrolment of 340 students mentored by 34 teachers.
Archana Pental, principal of the nursery and primary schools of Delhi’s #6 ranked CBSE-affiliated Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram (estb. 1972), is pleased that pre-primaries of K-12 schools whose contribution to the development of star students has been hitherto ignored, have been given “overdue recognition” by EducationWorld. However, she is of the opinion that the parameters on which pre-primaries, especially in Delhi, have been rated are not appropriate. “The parameters on which preschools should be evaluated are entirely different from the parameters on which primary-secondary schools are judged. For instance, in Delhi, transparency in the admissions process is of prime importance because elaborate rules have been prescribed by the high and Supreme courts to ensure fairness in the admission system. Moreover, smooth entry into nursery school and safe disbursal of youngest children is a factor of vital importance. If preschools of full schools in Delhi had also been assessed on these parameters, DPSRKP would have been ranked much higher because as indicated by your survey, our infrastructure and teachers are excellent,” says Pental, a political science and education postgrad of Delhi University who began her teaching career with DPSRKP in 1991 and was appointed headmistress of the nursery and primary school in 2011. Currently, DPS’ pre-primary has 432 children mentored by 24 teachers on its muster roll.
Further down the league table of feeder primaries of Delhi’s top-ranked schools, as noted elsewhere in the commentary to this survey, Amiown, pre-primary of the Amity International School, Pushp Vihar, ranked #6 in this category, is ranked several notches higher than its main school in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2015.
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