Mumbai: In a major policy shift, the Maharashtra government has made it compulsory for all pre-primary schools, including private kindergartens, to register with the School Education Department starting from the 2025-26 academic year. The move aims to bring early childhood education under regulatory oversight, ensuring quality and uniformity across schools.
Currently, many private kindergartens operate without a formal registration process. The new regulation will bring them under the framework of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, ensuring they follow a common curriculum along with government-run anganwadis. The School Education Department has already drafted a proposal outlining accreditation guidelines, infrastructure standards, and academic requirements for pre-primary institutions.
To streamline the registration process, the state has launched the Maharashtra Pre-school Portal, where all pre-primary schools will have to register. This will help in maintaining records, ensuring compliance, and monitoring quality standards. Schools that fail to register may face action, officials said.
In addition to this, the government is planning to integrate around 55,000 anganwadis with primary schools in the first phase. The aim is to provide a seamless transition for children from early childhood education to formal schooling.
The move is expected to benefit lakhs of children and ensure they receive structured and quality education from the foundational stage. However, private school associations have raised concerns about additional compliance burdens. The state government has assured them that the process will be simple and aimed only at improving educational standards.
This step marks a crucial reform in Maharashtra’s education system, ensuring better monitoring and accountability in pre-primary education.
