For the fourth year in succession, a carefully selected sample base of young parents and principals/teachers have ranked The Magic Years, Vasant Vihar, Delhi’s #1 followed by Step by Step, Panchsheel
Judged by the Quantum of Media coverage that the annual scramble for admissions of precious infants into the capital’s nurseries gets in the winter months, Delhi is the most early childhood care and education (ECCE)-conscious metro in India. Year-on-year print and audio-visual media feature stories of well-clad and shod young middle and upper middle class couples braving the winter chill before gates of the national capital’s most reputed preschools to acquire all-important admission forms for their little ones. With Delhi having expanded far beyond the main city and transforming into Delhi state and Delhi NCR (national capital region) with a massive population estimated at 20 million, the number of nurseries and pre-primaries in Delhi NCR are multiplying at a faster pace than the national average of 35 percent per year.
But despite the number of preschools spread across the city, Delhi’s informed young parents, teachers, and educat-ionists evidently accord the highest premium to tried and tested preschools with established reputations. This cautious conservatism explains why for the fourth year in succession the carefully selected sample base of 225 young parents (with children in preschool) and 61 principals and teachers who were asked to rate Delhi’s Top 20 pre-primaries has ranked The Magic years, Vasant Vihar (TMY, estb.1976) the national capital’s most respected preschool. The informed sample respondents have ranked TMY #1 on six of the ten parameters of ECCE excellence on which all preschools have been evaluated — teacher competence, teacher welfare and development, infrastructure, individual attention to students, innovative teaching and leadership, awarding it an aggregate score of 920 against the maximum possible 1,100.
“The consistently top rank awarded by the Delhi public to TMY is as much to the Montessori system of ECCE to which we’re fully committed. With the passage of time there’s growing awareness within the public that the Montessori early childhood model which allows children to learn through play and exploration is the best. However we have also upgraded our infrastructure by adding sports, music and special needs education facilities to enhance the joyful learning exper-ience of our children. With the addition of our new facilities, I can confidently state that TMY is on a par with the best Montessori schools worldwide,” says Shirley Madhavan Kutty, an English literature alumna of Cambridge University, UK, who after her marriage to the well-known journalist the late Madhavan Kutty, promoted TMY in Delhi 36 years ago. Currently this celebrated pre-primary in tony Vasant Vihar with a long waiting list hosts 220 infants from some of Delhi’s most prominent families mentored by 30 teachers, on its muster roll.
TMY is followed by the almost equally well-reputed Step by Step, Panchsheel, for the fourth time consecutively, Little Pearls Play School, Vasant Vihar, Kangaroo Kids, GK I, and Shishuvan, Vasant Kunj who constitute the Top 5. Ardee Montessori, Sujan Singh Park, and the Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning, Saket, which were ranked #3 and #4 last year have yielded ground but are still numbered among the national capital’s Top 10 pre-primaries. But of the Top 10, the preschool which has risen most in the estimation of ECCE monitors in Delhi is Little Pearls Play School, Vasant Vihar (LPPS), ranked #3 in the EW Delhi Preschools Rankings 2013.
Informed observers of the ECCE scene in Delhi attribute LPPS’ impressive rise in the league table this year to the reform and upgradation initiatives of Dr. Ekta Sharma, an education postgrad of Panjab University, Chandigarh, awarded a Ph D in emotional intelligence from Punjabi University, Patiala, founder of the Bright Foundation preschool, Delhi (2001) and child psychology and senior counselor at the G.D. Goenka School, Gurgaon, who took charge of LPPS in late 2009. “I am pleased to learn that there’s greater awareness and appre-ciation of Little Pearls’ guiding philosophy ‘let children be children’ under which we provide a stimulating environment which encourages children to learn joyously through exploration and discovery,” says Sharma. Ranked #1 on the parameter of ‘safety and hygiene’ and #2 for ‘leadership quality’, LPPS’ dramatic ascent in the EW Delhi preschools 2013 league table is to a significant extent the outcome of Sharma’s leadership of this preschool.
In the bottom half of the 2013 league table, most of the preschools ranked #10-20 last year have maintained their status, except for Kidzee, Nirman Vihar, whose ranking has risen admirably from #19 last year to #10 in 2013. However Shemrock Heritage, Rohini, EuroKids, E Block, GK II, and Little Millennium, Pitampura, ranked #12, #14 and #15 this year have lost ground.
To Construct the EW India Preschool Rankings 2013 league tables of early childhood care and education (ECCE) institutions, 500 preschools were shortlisted by EducationWorld, of whom 175 were sufficiently well-known to be assessed by the respondents base comprising 2,066 SEC (socio-economic category) A parents with at least one child in preschool, and 639 principals/teachers across 10 parameters or attributes. Preschools or ECCE institutions need to be evaluated according to separate and distinct parameters from primary-secondary schools.
Sample respondents in ten cities were asked to rate preschools in their civic limits on 10 parameters — competence of teachers, individual attention to students, value for money, leadership quality, parental involvement, innovative teaching, infrastructure, safety and hygiene, special needs education and teacher welfare and development.
The ratings awarded under each of these 10 parameters were aggregated to rank the most preferred preschools in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon and Noida. The rankings of Delhi’s Top 20 preschools under each parameter of excellence are set out below.
To read Delhi's best preschools league table visit http://www.educationworld.in/rank-preschool/new-delhi/2013.html