In this booming metro which retains some of its charm in several wards and suburbs, a multiplying number of new genre internationally benchmarked preschools have sprung up to meet the demand of its expanding middle class population. Here are Bangalore’s best preschools 2018-19 Widely known as the Silicon Valley of India for the several large multinational IT (information technology) software and hardware companies it hosts, once salubrious Bangalore, hitherto known as the garden city, from where this struggling advocacy publication with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda” is published, has rapidly transformed into a traffic-choked, misgoverned metropolis (pop.12 million) which has earned it the pejorative sobriquet of garbage city. Nevertheless its cluster of IT companies continues to attract a stream of well-qualified technical professionals intent on making it big in established IT firms and technology start-ups, which are mushrooming in this beleaguered metropolis. Consequently, a large and multiplying number of new genre internationally benchmarked preschool to university education institutions have sprung up to meet the demand of its expanding middle class population. Given the low age profile of the majority of IT professionals who have set up home in the booming city, a host of pre-primary schools delivering globally benchmarked early childhood care and education (ECCE), which is exempt from the graft-ridden regulatory supervision of the state’s education ministry, have proliferated in all neighbourhoods of this bustling metropolis. Intense competition between them has raised the standard of privately dispensed pre-primary education to unprecedented levels of excellence. Inevitably, ECCE delivered by the Central and state governments to children of bottom of the socio-economic pyramid households through government anganwadis is an area of darkness. Proprietary preschools In the annual EW Bangalore proprietary preschool league tables for the past five years, competition for the top spot has been limited to the vintage Head Start Montessori, Koramangala (estb. 1984) and new new genre Neev, Indiranagar and Indus Early Learning Centre (IELC), Whitefield. Currently five upscale Neev preschools promoted by Harvard Business School alumna Kavita Sabharwal, and two IELC pre-primaries promoted by the Indus Trust (estb. 2003) constituted by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kumar Malavalli and Bangalore real estate magnate Sushil Mantri among others, which has also promoted the IB (Geneva)-affiliated Indus International Schools in Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad, are ranked among Bangalore’s 42-strong proprietary preschools. Typically, Samina Mahmood, an alumna of North Bengal and Northampton universities and London Montessori Centre — who promoted Head Start Montessori, Koramangala (HSMK) which has 400 children (in two shifts) nurtured by 30 teachers on its musters, and enjoys a 5:1 applications-admissions ratio, 34 years ago — is unenthused about HSMK regaining its #1 ranking in Bangalore. “There are a large number of children in this city that need early childhood education and every school is doing its bit. We prefer to regard them as collaborators who need to encourage each other,” says Mahmood, who nevertheless admits to deriving special satisfaction that HSMK is ranked #1 under the…
