My first consideration is whether the school's teaching philosophy is consistent with what I hope Malik would take away from going to school for the first time. I just want him to develop a love for learning. After pre-school, there will be plenty of time to learn about calculus and financial markets. In the meantime, Malik just needs to be curious and have fun with kids his age. That said, our next considerations are (in no particular order) the school's facilities, the quality of their teachers, their location and of course, tuition.
It's good that most pre-schools in Metro Manila have Internet presence. That's really convenient for households like us where both parents work full-time. We need to get our hands on a lot of information and quick. Some don't respond to parent inquiries as quickly as the others though, which is sad but helpful in a way. Those pre-schools that do not bother to reply to our emails get stricken off the shortlist. Yey.
However, very few of these pre-schools post their tuition in their websites. We had to personally inquire at the schools to get the rates, which I am posting here to hopefully help other parents in their decision-making. By the way, as you may already know, fees vary per level. The fees posted here are for kids around Malik's age (3.6 - 4.5 years old). Some schools call that Nursery, others Kinder, still others some odd name like "Master Explorer".
