City Montessori School
private school in Lucknow
The City Montessori School (CMS) is a private co-educational, English-medium pre-primary to secondary multi-campus school located in Lucknow, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. With an enrolment of 61,345 students as of 10 August 2023, the school was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's largest school.
In 2014, the CMS Society was accredited by the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI) as an affiliated non-governmental organisation (NGO), reflecting its engagement in global educational initiatives.
Background
City Montessori School (CMS) was established in 1959 by educationist Jagdish Gandhi and his wife, Dr. Bharti Gandhi, in a single room at their residence in Lucknow. The school began with an initial enrolment of five students and a modest capital of ₹300. This inaugural campus, now designated as the Station Road Branch, remains a historic landmark in the institution's growth.
In 2002, CMS was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for its emphasis on global unity and value-based education. Additionally, the school received the 'Hope of Humanity' Award from Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism's Gelug ("Yellow Hat") school, in recognition of its contributions to fostering peace and harmony.
In the news
The City Montessori School garnered media attention for its academic collaborations, controversies, and social initiatives.
“City Montessori School” enters the record as private school in Lucknow. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what City, Montessori and School can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“City Montessori School” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, City, Montessori and School provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5123309. VIAF identifies the subject as 150441786. The Library of Congress control number is no2003067510. Authority coordinates are 26.790, 80.894. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 2014, 1959 and 2002.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “City Montessori School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.