Congratulations for raising awareness of early childhood care and education (ECCE). EducationWorld has done a great service by impacting the vital importance of ECCE upon the public through conferences and especially the EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings (EW December) and awards. Re the new categories (franchised, owned and part of high school) into which all preschools have been divided for ranking this year, I don’t understand why EducationWorld felt the need to make this segregation. The quality of ECCE and the common parameters on which all have been ranked have nothing to do with a preschool being franchised, owned or feeder of a high school. Under the new classification system, many Podar Education Network preschools which are owned or attached with high schools, have been placed in the franchised category and vice versa. Although most parents aren’t bothered whether a preschool is franchised or owned, they definitely want to know who they’re dealing with. So if a parent has been told that a learning centre is owned and EW classifies it as franchised or other category preschool, they would feel cheated and infer that important information was withheld. Please instruct the company which conducts your survey to ensure each preschool is placed in the proper category. Swati Popat Vats President, Podar Education Network, Mumbai The new taxonomy makes broad classifications. In the cases of preschool chains in which some institutions are owned and others franchised, it’s very time consuming to ascertain the exact status of each school. Therefore companies/chains with a mix of owned and franchised preschools are classified as being in the franchised category — Editor Faulty logic After the stupendous performance of Pathways schools in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2015, we had great expectations that our preschools would also be highly ranked. But this legitimate expectation was belied. The reason for our disappointment is the new preschools classification system adopted this year. In 2014, Pathways Early Years, Sector 49 was ranked #3 in Gurgaon. This year we expected to be ranked higher as the team had put in a lot of hard work in the past academic year. But due to the new classification system our ranking has gone down to #7. The logic of this new system is faulty. Just because Pathways Early Years is owned by the management of Pathways schools, it doesn’t need to be ranked in the composite schools category. Pathways Early Years is a standalone preschool and is independent of the composite Pathways schools. Your new taxonomy will not only demoralise our team but will affect the image of Pathways Early Years externally as well. Dropping from #3 last year to #7 is a drastic fall and change of the classification system is unlikely to be accepted as an excuse. I request you to please reassess the new system next year. Jasmeet Chouhan Sarla Holdings Pvt. Ltd Gurgaon Ranking mystery We are surprised that the ranking of Bamboola Playschool, Chennai has dropped in the EW Preschool Rankings 2015 (EW December). Bamboola…
