A Scoring Rubric for Evaluating Montessori and Preschool Programmes: A Review of 18 Leading Preschool & Montessori Brands in India

A desk-based review that develops and demonstrates a quality-evaluation instrument for early-childhood-education providers in India. The paper introduces a ten-domain, weighted scoring rubric — spanning curriculum fidelity, teacher qualification, teacher–student ratio, prepared environment and materials, safety and hygiene, individualised observation and assessment, parent engagement, outdoor and practical-life spaces, accreditation, and fee transparency — that combines ordinal domain scores into a single composite quality score on a [1, 5] scale, with a five-band classification function and a worked example. It then applies the rubric illustratively to 18 preschool and Montessori brands operating in India, spanning mass-franchise networks, Montessori-specific chains, and premium international-curriculum brands, and maps each rubric domain to the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.2 targets and indicators. The central argument is that, in the absence of an official ranking body for Indian preschools, the rubric — not brand name — should be the primary evaluation tool applied to any specific centre before enrolment.