Perhaps the most heartbreaking injustice that has been visited upon the citizens of free India is the open, continuous and uninterrupted neglect of its youngest children. The statistics are grim and pitiful. Of the country’s 164 million children under age five, 48 percent suffer severe malnutrition and are in danger of stunting and brain damage. Only an estimated 10 million of this huge population of infants lucky to be born into middle class homes, enjoy the right to professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE). Half of the remaining 154 million youngest children receive perfunctory ECCE in 1.4 million anganwadis — essentially nutrition centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide a modicum of ECCE. The remaining 75 million are left to the mercies of their poor undernourished mothers suffering the insolence of office, on a daily basis.
Against this backdrop of cruel official neglect of our youngest and most vulnerable children, for the past decade since your editor experienced an epiphany and discovered the great socio-economic value of professionally administered early childhood care and education, this publication has been publishing annual league tables rating and ranking the best pre-primaries, aka preschools, in major cities across India. The purpose of this exercise is not only to enable urban middle class households to identify and choose suitable preschools for their infants and give them a good start in life, but also to underscore the critical importance of ECCE for developing the country’s abundant human capital resource. And unlike other pretender education-focused publications which have followed in our wake, we never fail to reiterate our continuous demand for greater allocations from the Central and state governments for the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) programme which administers the country’s 1. 4 million anganwadis.
Be that as it may, to compile the EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings 2018-19 league tables which rate and rank over 500 preschools in 16 cities countrywide — in two separate categories, proprietary and franchised, to avoid apples and oranges-type comparisons — 100-plus field personnel of Centre for Forecasting and Research (estb. 2000) interviewed 8,425 sample respondents comprising a mix of parents with children in preschool, and pre-primary teachers and principals over a period of four months. These league tables and accompanying commentaries — unprecedented and unique worldwide — dominate this year-end issue, compelling us to drop several of our usual sections. Moreover top-ranked preschools and anganwadis in major cities will be felicitated and awarded at the EducationWorld Early Childhood Education National Conference 2019 scheduled for January 19 in Bangalore. Like I said, we accord high importance to professionally administered ECCE.
NB: Since the exercise of rating and ranking the country’s best pre-primaries was spread over four months (July-October), though great care has been taken by C fore, some pre-primaries which have shut down/changed names/disaffiliated from franchisors, may be ranked under their previous names.
