MY kid saksham (15-07-2010) finished his playgroup and nursery. we are living in handewadi road, hadapsar which is near to undri, nibm on 1 side and hadapsar on other side. kindly provide us the best school for long term, not sure about board, but I heard CBSE board is the best.

Dear Madhurie As I am relocating to pune and I am looking for addmission for my son in Grade 1 with CBSE affilated scools. Please advise me the good schools in Pune near Viman nagar area. Thanks and best regards Ashish Mathur

There are many CBSE schools around Viman Nagar, Kindly check the blog.

Dear Madhurie, First of all congratulations on the amazing job you are doing in helping the worried/guilty parents like us:-)Your website is like an encyclopedia of all the school information.Seriously amazing job on the meaningful reviews etc. So here is our story! We are currently based out in San Jose, California.Me and my husband are S/W professionals and we both work for the IT firm. We have a 5 year old daughter (Born on Sept-7-2008) named Jiya. So Jiya has started schooling here at the age of 3 and we thought that Jiya would start her Kindergarten (UKG) in India in June 2014.We were always in two minds to return to India. So we took the decision in July 2013 to move back to India and I got her admitted in Lkg Programme at Sapling school.She was older in her class being born in Septmber.She was not able to adjust there socially but acadamically she was doing great.But because of our professional commitments here in the US we had to come back here in US in Novemeber and we did the mistake of admitting her in Kindergarten (UKG) as the cutoff here is Sept 1.So obviously she failed to prove acadamically in the class as she happened to be the youngest in her class.But she was motivated and learnt a lot but did not master the skills she was supposed to.We were extremely stressed out too putting her back in Jr Kindergarten (Lkg) but she is happy there. We plan to come back to India in June 2014 and planning to admit her in Ukg at Sapling. Kindly advise me if we are doing it right for her and her future by giving her too many tansitions?And what would be beneficial for her. I would really appreciate your advice/recommendation in this regard. Regards, Vidya

Madhurie, Thank you for taking time to reply! Yes, so looks like we do not have much of a choice. Feels terrible, though, to make a 3 year old travel 5-6kms back and forth thru the Pune traffic everyday.

If I had the freedom to choose, I would wait till they finished their Sr Kg in the pre-school. Ideally that is what should be. Pre-schools came into existence in UK only because there were a few kids who needed a little support either due to being very young as compared to the other kids or due to the reason they were late bloomers. I am hoping that very soon, the RTE and SC will enforce all schools to shut down their pre-schools and start from Class 1 to relieve the parents from all the dilemmas and torture. But as of now the practicality asks you to look for the admissions at the schools you want your child to go to based on his/her nature.

Hi Madhuri, I have a generic question - according to you, when is the best time to switch to a mainstream big school? Is it Nursery or Jr. Kg or Sr. KG? The reason for this question is that most of the kids seem so happy in their little Pre-schools, that some of us don't have the heart to uproot them from the comfort zone, for as long we can. What do you think - is it better to shift after completing the Playgroup itself or wait until the 1st std admissions?