To enable the city’s middle class parents to select the most suitable preschools for their children, C fore field personnel interviewed 622 preschool parents and 75 principals/teachers in Chennai to rate and rank 55 proprietary and franchised pre-primaries Households in the southern city of Chennai (pop. 9.8 million) have always placed a high premium on good quality K-12 and higher education. This industrial port city has a reputation for hosting well-reputed primary-secondary schools and tertiary education institutions in STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) subjects with Tamil Nadu (pop. 63 million) boasting the largest number of engineering colleges (526) in India. Therefore, it’s unsurprising that there’s rising parental demand for professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) which prepares children for success in school and higher education. To enable the city’s SEC (socio-economic category) ‘A’ parents to select the most suitable preschools for their children, field personnel of the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research (C fore) interviewed 622 preschool parents and 75 principals/teachers in Chennai to rate and rank 55 sufficiently well-known proprietary and franchised pre-primaries under ten parameters of ECCE excellence including competence of teachers, infrastructure, innovative teaching, safety and hygiene, individual attention to students etc. Owned/proprietary Since 2016, SEED, Adyar and Vruksha Montessori, Alwarpet have been alternatively voted Chennai’s #1 proprietary pre-primaries. This year SEED, Adyar ranked #2 last year has displaced Vruksha Montessori as the city’s #1 pre-primary. Following Vruksha, ranked #2, is Indus Early Learning Centre, Neelankarai, which has retained its #3 rank for the third consecutive year. Affiliated Indus preschools in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune are also ranked among the Top 3 preschools in these cities. Promoted in 2004 by Jaya Sastri, an ECCE alumna of Trenton College, New Jersey (USA) who acquired valuable teaching experience in Headstart, USA, before promoting SEED, Adyar 14 years ago, this globally benchmarked pre-primary is top-ranked on the parameters of innovative teaching, individual attention to students, leadership, parental involvement and special needs education across the proprietary and franchised categories. “It’s great news that we have regained our #1 ranking. I believe parents greatly appreciate our commitment to providing a safe, nurturing and positive environment for children. That’s why they consistently rank SEED, Adyar among the top preschools of Chennai. In particular, parents highly value our 1:10 teacher-pupil ratio which enables teachers to devote individual attention to children and adapt lessons and activities for their specific learning and development needs. Moreover from last year, we have made special efforts to reach out and educate parents about positive parenting,” says Sastri who has successfully scaled and expanded SEED to a chain of 20 owned and 20 franchised preschools in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Eight SEED owned pre-primaries are ranked in the 35-strong league table of Chennai’s best proprietary preschools. Yet the most dramatic rise in the 2018-19 league table is that of Vels International Preschool, Neelankarai (VIP-N, estb.2004). Ranked #1 in the franchised category in 2015 and 2016 as Vael’s Billabong High-Kangaroo Kids, its…
