After negotiating twists and turns, backstabs and betrayals, ups and downs for 26 years in a society that foolishly pays scant attention to education – especially public education — your editors can justifiably derive some pride for having moved the needle of public policy in all sectors of Indian education.

For instance, in the primary-secondary school sector our annual EW India School Rankings (EWISR, estb.2007) has evolved into the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools ranking survey. The annual EWISR has had the socially beneficial effect of stimulating competition among schools and arousing institutional pride while simultaneously enabling parents to choose the most suitable schools for their progeny.  

Secondly, by continuous propagation of the importance of skills education and advocating greater academy-industry cooperation and integration, EducationWorld has generated widespread awareness that the 10 million graduates streaming out of the country’s 52,000 colleges and 1,338 universities every year, should hit the ground running.

Yet perhaps the greatest achievement of all is to have generated nationwide awareness of the importance of professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) for infants and youngest children. Converted to the cause of structured ECCE for all children, since 2010, your editors have convened national ECCE seminars every year and simultaneously introduced the annual EW India Preschool Rankings which rates the country’s best preschools on ten parameters of ECCE excellence in 76 cities. Yet bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of best pre-primaries/kindergartens are fees-charging privately promoted enterprises, simultaneously we have beamed a persistent spotlight on the country 1.39 million government-promoted Anganwadi Centres (AWCs). We have consistently contended that they should be upgraded into formal, well-furbished preschools.

Miraculously, our relentless advocacy for professionally administered ECCE for all infants, has borne fruit. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 directs the State to ensure that all children aged 3-6 are compulsorily provided professional ECCE. Moreover, the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, directs the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group 6-14. 

Against the backdrop of these favourable winds,  we present the 15th consecutive EW India Preschool Rankings 2025-26 featuring the country’s most respected formal pre-primaries in 76 cities and towns countrywide, True, most of them are fees-levying private preschools. But the objective of  the annual EWIPR is two-fold: to stimulate ranked preschools to improve continuously, and secondly to project them as models that all pre-primaries, including AWCs, must strive to emulate.

All citizens should note: It’s better to build strong children than to repair broken adults.