For this year’s survey conducted under a new taxonomy, Mumbai’s most well-known 20 owned/proprietary, 17 franchised and 15 pre-primaries attached to K-10/12 schools were rated and ranked separately. Here are Mumbai’s top-ranked preschools for the year 2015 Mumbai (aka Bombay), India’s premier seaport and commercial capital (pop.21 million), has always been more receptive to revolutionary technology and evolutionary ideas than cities and communities of the hinterland. Therefore the city’s first pre-primaries based on modern pedagogies — Besant Montessori, Juhu and West Wind, Gamdevi — were established more than half century ago as prep schools for Mumbai’s top-ranked primary-secondaries such as the Cathedral and John Connon School (estb. 1860) among others. For this year’s survey conducted under a new taxonomy, Mumbai’s most well-reputed pre-primaries were rated and ranked by field researchers of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb. 2000), one of the country’s most well-known market research and opinion polls company. They interviewed parents with children in preschools, principals and teachers who constituted a sample respondents database of 639 to rate the shortlisted preschools across 10 parameters — competence of teachers, infrastructure, safety and hygiene, individual attention to students, among others — of early childhood care and education. The respondents were asked to rate 20 owned/proprietary, 17 franchise and 15 preschools attached to K-10/12 schools separately. Owned/proprietary preschools The new process adopted for the latest EW preschool rankings survey seems to have benefitted Besant Montessori (BM), Juhu which was steadily moving up the Mumbai league table of pre-primaries. In 2011, Mumbai’s first Montessori preschool (estb.1948) was ranked #15, #12 in 2013 and #3 last year. This year, it has been voted the #1 preschool of the country’s financial capital in the owned/proprietary category. “I am very glad to learn that Besant Montessori is ranked Mumbai’s #1 preschool under the new process adopted by EducationWorld. The top rank awarded by your informed survey respondents is very encouraging for all of us because it shows that Besant Montessori, promoted by Dr. Tehmina Wadia who trained under Dr. Maria Montessori over half a century ago, has progressed in the right direction to realise her vision. I believe the credit for our high ranking should accrue to our directress Dolly Wadia and all our teachers who have worked unitedly and cooperatively to develop BM into a uniquely child-centric school,” says Arundhati Chaudhuri, an alumna of the St. Nicholas Centre for Montessori Education, London who joined BM in 1997 as a teacher and is currently principal of the pre-primary of BM which offers preschool-class V education to 280 children. Adds Kavita Rode, principal of the primary school and formerly head of the pre-primary section: “I am elated but not surprised because among ourselves, we are aware that BM has developed into the country’s most progressive and child-centric pre-primary nurturing youngest children according to the joyful learning precepts and practices prescribed by Dr. Maria Montessori. There should be more Montessori schools like ours across the country.” The rising popularity of Montessori…
