Good one! Let me put down my story too on this same thread for the benefit of parents looking for!!
My kid is currently in PreKG, joined in June 2017.
We were in Bangalore and were getting relocated to Chennai at that point of time. We did start our hunting somewhere around mid of November-December, 2016. By the time we started, most of the schools have closed down the admission process or application forms were issued already. We haven't even decided whether we would go for CBSE/ICSE/IGCSE/ what not :) :)
Finally, we felt lets not worry about the syllabus right now and get good schools and then we got settled down with following shortlisted schools.
- BVM Global, Perungudi CBSE
- BVM, Adayar CBSE
- DAV Public School, Velachery , CBSE
- DAV, Adambakkam , CBSE
- APL Global, Thoraipakkam, IGCSE
We applied in all of them, BVM Adayar / DAV Public School/ DAV Adambakkam did not even bother to get the application from us, since we are from Bangalore and they were not sure that we would get settled within 5km radius to school and rejected it. We did try to convince saying that we would surely rent a house close to school, but who listens.
Finally we got through admission in BVM Global, Perungudi. But, yes we did not put our kid there, considering the dumpyard in very close proximity to the school and hell of septic tankers running and parked in front of the school.
Then we changed our criteria to opt schools.
- Close proximity to residence
- Student Teacher Ratio
- Good atmosphere for learning with fun
- Not just book based learning methodology (atleast for initial years)
We did like APL Global very much but considering the fees relatively higher, we did not opt for that too.
Oh, then came one of my friend who introduced me to
Tatva School, Velachery, since many of his colleagues had great opinions about it and their kids were studying there. Then yes we did make a visit to learn more and honestly, we were much impressed. Thanks a ton to him!!
You should definitely take a look at their facebook page [
https://www.facebook.com/tatva.school/] , which talks more about their activities on a day - day basis. There are photos/videos on what they have in the past 3 months of this academic year too, which should help you understand.
Admission process is quite simple.
- Walk in to the school
- Talk to the representatives there
- Talk to principal
- If you are ok, then admission is given
- First come first serve basis.
Believe me its not a school where admission for June 2018 gets over by October-November 2017. You have plenty of time to think.
Its based on IGCSE syllabus.
They have three branches.
1. Velachery (Day care and Nursery (PreKG), Jr KG and SrKG)
2. Medavakkam (Day care and Nursery (PreKG), Jr KG and SrKG)
3. Polachery (PreKG to Grade 7)
Cons:- As
DolphinDivin pointed out correctly, no school is perfect right?
Yes we do have some negatives with this school.
1. You have to come to Polachery starting Grade 1
2. There is no donation when you get admission for PreKG. But yes you need to pay an admission fee of 75k (in addition to tution fees) if you are continuing there from Grade 1. But this actually gave me an option to switch my kid to some other school from Grade 1, just in case we dont like it.
Am 200% sure I would get that case, since we love it.
3. Not a very hi-fi infrastructure (which mostly as a parent we would expect), but they have a decent one which is more than enough!
On curriculum wise, I completely echo what
DolphinDivin has said.