Sixteen Children in a Hostel, by Decision of an Assembly

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

New Era High School began on 1 August 1945 as a Baha'i children's hostel in the hill town of Panchgani, Maharashtra, India, opened by decision of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of India, Burma and Ceylon rather than by a single named founder. Sixteen children were enrolled at the start, a small enough number that the school's later growth into a major institution was in no way guaranteed by its opening scale.

It grew into one of the first Baha'i education projects in India, a distinction that places its 1945 founding among the earliest organized Baha'i educational efforts on the subcontinent rather than a later addition to an already established network. Per its own website it remains under the supervision of the New Era School Committee Trust and the guidance of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of India, governance that has continued from a religious assembly rather than shifting to a secular trust alone.

The school describes itself as inspired by the universal tenets of the Baha'i Faith while enrolling children of many faiths and nationalities, an open-enrollment posture built into its identity from a founding that began with sixteen children of one small hostel.