Field researchers of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) interviewed 582 parents and 65 preschool principals/teachers of this buzzing city to rank 34 pre-primaries in two categories — owned/proprietary and franchised. Technically within the administrative jurisdiction of the state government of Haryana (pop.25.4 million) but popularly included in Delhi NCR (National Capital Region), the new steel-n-glass city of Gurgaon (pop.877,000) has quickly emerged as one of the country’s premier industrial and financial hubs. This newly emergent city hosts offices of 250-plus Fortune 500 companies including Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft and is an automobile manufacturing hotspot (Maruti-Suzuki, Hero Honda, TVS Sundaram). Simultaneously, because of its proximity and good connectivity with Delhi, Gurgaon has also emerged as a new education hub with several globally benchmarked K-12 schools (GD Goenka, Heritage, Shiv Nadar) and universities (Ashoka, O.P. Jindal) having established sprawling campuses to educate children of the city’s large and expanding pool of professionals employed in the IT/ICT, automobiles and BPO among other industries. Inevitably, this satellite city has also experienced a rapid mushrooming of early childhood care and education (ECCE) centres demanded by its young and upwardly mobile workforce. Field researchers of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) interviewed 582 parents and 65 preschool principals/teachers of this buzzing city to rank 34 pre-primaries in two categories — owned/proprietary and franchised. OWNED/PROPRIETARY PRESCHOOLS The highlight of the EW 2019-20 league table of Gurgaon’s proprietary preschools is that the six-year uninterrupted reign of Pallavan, Sohna Road/DLF Phase I is over. This year’s 647 sample respondents have decisively voted Anand Preschool, DLF Phase I, which debuted in the 2018-19 league table at #3, and Amiown, Amity’s Caring Preschool, Sector 27 — ranked #1 in 2018-19 and #2 in 2017-18 — Gurgaon’s jointly ranked #1 proprietary pre-primaries. Moreover this year, Pallavan is obliged to share the #2 rank with iDiscoveri Preschool, Sector 46 which was #2 last year. The high end of the Top 10 table comprises Safari Kids, DLF Phase IV ranked #3 (#6 in 2018-19), Shalom Hills Nursery School, Sushant Lok and Little Pearls, Cyber City jointly ranked #4 and Early Learning Village, Sushant Lok, Phase I and The Shri Ram Early Years, Sector 48 tied at #5 (8 & 5). Unsurprisingly, Devicka Arora, principal of Anand Preschool, DLF Phase 1 (APDLFP1, estb.2007) is delighted with the swift ascent of this 12-year-old pre-primary unranked until 2016-17 and #3 last year which has vaulted to the very top of Gurgaon’s 25-strong proprietary league table with high scores under the parameters of teacher welfare and development, individual attention to students, parental involvement, and special needs education. “This is a proud moment for us. We are happy to have lived up to the expectations of our parents’ community and thank them for actively supporting our initiatives. We are also thankful to our dedicated teachers for innovating new teaching-learning practices and sparing no effort to provide joyful early years education to our children. Rising awareness in Gurgaon of…
