PM SHRI Kendriya Vidyalaya AFS Yelahanka, Bengaluru

The thing to check before you fall for the setting is the stream list. This school offers Science and Arts at Classes 11 and 12, and no Commerce. Its own genesis page says so and its section table confirms it: three Science sections and one Arts section at Class 11, three Science and one Arts at Class 12, with nothing in between. Among the Bengaluru Kendriya Vidyalayas covered here that combination is unique. Every other campus that offers only two streams offers Science and Commerce. A child who wants Accountancy and Business Studies will have to look at KV MEG Centre, KV ASC Centre or one of the Jalahalli schools instead, and a child who wants Arts has one of the few places in the city system that runs it.

Geographically this is the outlying campus of the group. The school describes itself as sitting amid sylvan surroundings away from the hustle of the metro, on the national highway nearer to Bangalore International Airport, at Air Force Station Yelahanka, Bengaluru 560063. That is a real consideration rather than brochure language: a family living south or central will be committing to a long daily run, and the school publishes no transport information at all, so the commute is a question to settle before the application and not after.

It is a large school. The genesis page puts enrolment at 2,540 with 64 staff; the homepage counter gives 1,221 boys and 1,157 girls, totalling 2,378, with 54 teaching and 3 non-teaching. Either figure places it in the top handful in the city. The section table gives four parallel sections in each year from the primary classes to Class 10, with average enrolment per section running close to 50 across the middle school, which is at the upper end of what the sangathan sanctions. Class 5 was the fullest at 206 children across four sections.

Seat availability follows an interesting pattern here. Nothing is free anywhere from the primary years to Class 11 Arts, which is full at 18, and Class 11 Science, full at 110. The vacancies are all at Class 12: 31 places free in Science across three sections and 15 in Arts. Free seats at Class 12 usually mean pupils have left after their Class 10 results, and they are genuinely available to a family moving into the city mid-course, which is the hardest transfer to arrange anywhere.

The school's own account of what it does outside lessons is unusually specific, and specific is worth more than a long list. It names participation in the Mathematics Olympiad, the Green Olympiad, national-level essay and painting competitions, Youth Parliament, adventure activities, educational tours, exhibition tours and scouting, at both local level and the inter-Kendriya-Vidyalaya level the sangathan organises. It also claims awards without naming them, which is the part to discount. The grade span runs from Balvatika 1 through Class 12 according to the genesis page, so pre-primary provision exists here, although the section table read did not carry Balvatika rows and the number of pre-primary sections is therefore not published.