Ahmedabad’s top-ranked preschools 2017-18

Responding to pressing demand from the middle class for professionally delivered English-medium ECCE, a rising number of edupreneurs have stepped forward to promote model pre-primaries in the textiles city. Here are Ahmedabad’s top-ranked preschools 2017-18 In the western seaboard state of Gujarat which is currently witnessing high voltage campaigning by the Congress and BJP for the legislative assembly election scheduled between December 9-18, education reform is conspicuously missing from the election agenda of all political parties. Ill-advisedly, as the state — flaunted by former three-term chief minister and now prime minister Narendra Modi as the country’s most advanced model state — fares poorly in education and human development. According to the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), Gujarat ranks #18 on its Education Development Index, way behind states such as Sikkim and Karnataka. But instead of focusing attention on raising teaching-learning outcomes in the state’s government schools, successive governments in Gandhinagar have been preoccupied with interfering (‘regulating’) with the tuition fees of private schools. For instance on March 20, the BJP government enacted the Gujarat Self-financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017, under which all private schools including schools affiliated with CISCE, CBSE, international boards, are subject to government-prescribed tuition fee ceilings. Fortunately, early childhood care and education (ECCE) — which according to a growing number of educationists worldwide, is more important than primary education — has escaped the attention of Gujarat’s regressive neta-babu brotherhood. Therefore, even if belatedly, responding to pressing demand from the middle class for professionally delivered English-medium ECCE, a rising number of edupreneurs have stepped forward to promote model pre-primaries — proprietary and franchised — in Ahmedabad (pop.8 million), the state’s business and commercial capital. Proprietary/owned The textile city’s 590 sample respondents comprising parents with preschool children and teachers/principals interviewed by C fore field researchers, have once again voted RedBricks Junior, Satellite (estb.2009) the city’s #1 proprietary preschool and top-rated it for teacher competence, infrastructure, individual attention to students, innovative teaching and parental involvement. Rising Kids, Bopal and Olive Green Kids School, Navarangpura have interchanged their 2016 ranks to be ranked #2 and #3 respectively this year while Vedant International School, Maninagar has retained its #4 rank with Little Wings Holistic Childhood Centre, Bopal, impressively debuting within the Top 5. “I feel a sense of gratitude and vindication about Redbricks retaining its #1 rank. It hasn’t been an easy journey to establish a developmentally appropriate preschool in an environment where parents are obsessed about developing their children’s academic abilities from youngest age. This recognition from Ahmedabad’s informed public is an endorsement of our efforts to deliver enjoyable ECCE to our children. Our top ratings on teacher competence, innovative teaching and parental involvement is a result of our holistic approach to early years education,” says Renita Handa, an alumna of St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad and Bentley University, USA and promoter-director of Redbricks Junior, Satellite, which has an enrolment of 261 pupils and 32 teachers.  Further down the ten-strong league table of Ahmedabad’s most admired proprietary…