City Montessori School

City Montessori School (CMS) is a co-educational, English-medium school system in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest school by enrolment, with 61,345 pupils across 21 campuses as of 10 August 2023 - cmseducation.org

# Origins CMS was founded in 1959 by Dr Jagdish Gandhi and Dr Bharti Gandhi, starting with just five students in a single rented room at their home in Lucknow.

The original campus is now known as the Station Road branch and remains one of the flagship campuses in the network.

# Scale And Campuses Over several decades CMS has grown into a city-wide school system serving more than 60,000 students from pre-primary to Class 12, spread across 20–21 campuses in Lucknow.

Branches include Station Road, Kanpur Road, Indira Nagar, Gomti Nagar, Mahanagar, Aliganj, Rajajipuram, RDSO and newer campuses such as Golf City and Shalimar OneWorld.

CMS is affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (ICSE/ISC) and also runs Cambridge (IGCSE) programmes on selected campuses.

# Educational Approach CMS provides education from Montessori/pre-primary through senior secondary, typically organised into Pre-Primary, Primary, Junior and Senior sections.

Pre-primary sections at multiple branches explicitly adopt the Montessori method for children aged roughly 2–5, combining Montessori, Nursery and Kindergarten groups under one early-years umbrella.

At higher levels the school follows structured ICSE/ISC or Cambridge curricula, with a strong emphasis on academic achievement, co-curricular competitions, Olympiads, festivals and international exchanges.

# Philosophy And Peace Work The school motto is “Jai Jagat” (“Victory to the World”), reflecting a philosophy of world unity, peace education and value-based schooling that runs through assemblies, festivals and international programmes.

In 2002 CMS received the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for its long-standing efforts to promote global understanding and peace through school-level activities, conferences and children’s exchanges.

The CMS Society has also been accredited as an associated NGO by the United Nations Department of Public Information, underlining its positioning as both a school system and a civil-society actor in peace and global citizenship education.

# Links To Montessori And Sunita Gandhi CMS incorporates Montessori methods in its early-years sections, especially at branches such as Indira Nagar, Station Road and RDSO, tying its large, conventional school structure back to child-centred preschool practice.

Educator Sunita Gandhi, daughter of the founders, has served as a key academic leader in the CMS group and later founded City International School and DEVI, where she developed ALfA Pedagogy and broader “disruptive literacy” initiatives that grew out of the CMS ecosystem and its long engagement with experimental education and peace work.