With rising awareness of the vital importance of high-quality ECCE within Delhi’s expanding middle class, C fore field researchers interviewed 755 sample respondents (preschool parents, principals and teachers) to rate and rank 41 sufficiently well-known proprietary and 25 franchised preschools in the national capital Awareness of the critical importance of professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) is arguably more acute in Delhi (pop. 18.6 million) — the sprawling megalopolis which has not only been awarded statehood by the Union government, but also the nomenclature of Delhi NCR (national capital region) which includes swathes of the contiguous states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh by business and industry — than any other Indian city. Every winter, winding queues of anxious middle class parents ready and willing to brave the toxic early morning air of the world’s most polluted metropolis, are witnessed before the gates of the national capital’s most reputed pre-primary schools. They are part of the annual scramble for admission forms of these pre-primaries, (aka preschools) which they believe will provide high quality age-appropriate ECCE that will stand their progeny in good stead when they enter formal schooling, higher education institutions and workplaces. Although the longest queues form before the gates of composite K-12 schools which also offer pre-primary education — because admission into composite schools ensures smooth continuity in school education until class XII — the waiting lines in front of Delhi’s standalone top-ranked preschools are barely shorter. A huge demand-supply disequilibrium in high-quality professionally administered early childhood education is the motivating factor behind the annual scramble for admission into pre-primaries across the city offering ECCE at all price points. Against this backdrop of rising — even if belated — awareness of the vital importance of ECCE within the fast-expanding middle class of Delhi NCR, field researchers of the highly-reputed, Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company C fore interviewed a mix of 755 sample respondents comprising parents with preschool children, and preschool principals and teachers, and persuaded them to rate and rank 41 sufficiently well-known proprietary and 25 franchised preschools in their city. Proprietary and franchised schools are separately rated and ranked to avoid apples and oranges-type comparisons. OWNED/PROPRIETARY PRESCHOOLS The proprietary preschools league table for Delhi has been topped by The Magic Years, Vasant Vihar (TMY, estb.1984) ab initio since EducationWorld pioneered the idea of rating and ranking preschools countrywide eight years ago in the public interest. However, with the promotion of several new globally benchmarked preschools by highly qualified and knowledgeable pre-primary educationists in the national capital, TMY’s dominance of the Delhi league table is being challenged. In recent years, TMY’s title has been strongly challenged by Step by Step, Panchsheel (SbS, estb. 1992) which was ranked #1 in 2016-17 before TMY regained its premier ranking last year. This year it’s perhaps in the fitness of things that both these excellent preschools are jointly ranked #1 in Delhi in the proprietary category with SbS ranked #1 on three of the ten parameters — teacher welfare…
