The need for running a preschool in India is alarming since there’s a surge in young population compared to the growth of preschools. With the population of age group comprising 0-6 years is above crore, India homes one of the largest child population in the world.
Though the education industry expected to grow with CAGR of 23% by 2022, there are a few sets of challenges yet to be tackled by a preschool in Ahmedabad and other metropolitan cities. Right from awareness to high rental space, running a preschool in India has its own challenges to tackle to ensure catering the bright future of the country.
6 Significant Challenges to Running Preschool in India
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Parents lacking awareness
One of the major challenges for preschool running in India comes from parents itself. Most of the Indian parents aren’t aware of the necessity of enrolling their children to preschool at an early age. They fail to understand the importance of early education and how they can positively contribute to a child’s growth.
With the majority of the Indian middle-class families raised bearing traditional mindsets looks into the financing of preschool education that can cost anything around INR 40,000 to 1 lakhs.
They consider this as an additional yearly expense as they are looking forward to more savings for their child’s elementary schooling. Though parents residing in metro cities are well aware of this fact, there are plenty of tier II and tier III cities where parents having low disposable incomes find it difficult to afford preschool for their children.
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Background Experience
Most of the big franchise preschool in India accept owners having educational or background. This means any businesses looking to open a preschool may not do so unless they have relevant experience.
Though it may look like a lucrative business option for people coming from another industrial sector, this act as a barrier. It limits the number of possible franchise preschool that a country can have.
On the flipside, this is also necessary because opening a preschool in India will have owners facing intricacies and challenges to managing the tiny tots. Preschools also need to consider the child psychology and amount of personalized approach towards imparting child education since this may become a serious issue and may lead to franchise failure.
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Curriculum Design and Structure
Those non-franchise school which is homegrown face a major challenge in terms of curriculum design and structure in accordance with the ECCE curriculum framework of India. The goal to prepare children for elementary education requires a curriculum that bridges the gap from infancy to early childhood.
The lack of knowledge over here has preschools in India designing A curriculum that’s not well-researched. Overcoming this challenge will require a preschool head to take a well-designed and well-researched course that automatically results in substantial learning for children.
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Lack of Quality Teaching Staff and Training
Lack of quality teachers and training facilities pose a staggering challenge faced by preschools in India. Due to the high population, India has least teach-student ratio with preschools teacher-student ratio at 1:10. One of the reasons is a lower pay scale to teachers wherein preschools in India finds it difficult to interest quality teachers.
Another challenge is providing the right training to hired teaching staff. Preschool teacher is an expensive proposition since the availability of quality trainers is scanty.
And even if a preschool equips quality trainers the lack of reading and training material preschool in the unavailability of good trainers and training material is a big issue.
That is why the best kids play school in Ahmedabad prepares its own curriculum after a thorough consideration from experts and charts out its own supplementary training materials.
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Reaching out Via Sales and Marketing
Most of the unorganized preschools in India works in a vacuum as it fails to hit the right places in the market. With preschools established in a particular locality, the trend is, parents, opt for schools near their vicinity out of sheer convenience.
This limits their prospective admissions and requires to pump in a huge marketing and sales budget to enroll more pupils. Here, the franchisee preschool has an upper-hand since the franchise itself takes up all the promotional costs.
On the other hand, small preschools try to operate on increasing walk-in conversions which requires setting up more facility to interest parents.
If they fail to do so, they may well be prepared for putting up hoardings in the city and reach out to prospective parents’ group with the efforts of digital marketing.
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Legal requirements
Though preschool owners in India are not bound by any specific legislation or certification to set up a play school in India, there are laws like the Private School Education Acts imposed by the State Government.
This requires playschool to register itself and furnish all the licensing requirements to stay fully compliant. For example, setting up a preschool in Ahmedabad will require owning or renting an independent space and suffice to laws defined by a local municipal corporation and education department.
With an increase in demand for preschools in India, starting a playschool is more than just a business opportunity. It is a social and ethical responsibility that is accompanied by its own economic gains.
For teachers and owners of preschool imparting child, education provides some real moral satisfaction. Overcoming these challenges pays off as you put in efforts to nurture the bright minds who can redefine the country’s future.