Hi all mummies,
My son is Ichiban Montessori at Fernvale since January this year. I've noticed that there seems to be a serious shortage of working staff at the centre now.
Since my son joined their N1 class in January, his chinese teacher left in March and his form teacher subsequently left in June. Now, there is only 1 teacher (Ms Feng) left to take charge of the entire N1 class. The centre has also seen 2 principals leaving within a span of 6 months.
When I first attended the orientation and discussion session with the school, I was told by the principal (Kit) that N1 and N2 will have 2 teachers each class and 1 helper will be tagged to these 2 classes to help out. Montessori lessons will also be conducted in the afternoons very soon as they planned to hire a Montessori trained teacher into the centre.
However, I have not seen any sign of montessori teaching since the day he joined. I'm not saying the teachers are not doing their jobs. In fact, I applaude the teachers at the centre for their dedication and commitment towards the children. Can tell that they dote on the kids a lot. However, it is also very obvious that they are physically drained from handling so many children at one go.
Whilst I can understand the difficulties the centre may face with hiring of trained teachers, there still needs to be a reasonable teacher-student ratio to be maintained at a centre operating with their current intake. Mistakes like giving back the wrong milk bottle, missing uniforms, wrong towels given, wrong shoes worn, no medication being returned to me at the end of the day are some mistakes that have been recurring more and more frequently ever since the number of teachers in the centre have started decreasing. To me, these are signs that the centre is not operating in a efficient and effective manner. Not having my son's medication being returned to me is considered a serious issue as my son ended up missing his night dosage.
I paid for a set of story books for an English Reading Programme but till now I have not seen the storybooks yet. As my boy has speech delay, I can't find out from him what exactly happens in school and it can get pretty frustrating sometimes.
I seriously think there needs to be some form of transparency to the parents with regards to how the centre is being managed since we paid $650 a month (after subsidy) to send our children there. A simple example, my son is currently down with a serious case of stomach flu. I called the centre to inform the principal upon the doctor's recommendation and was told that there was 1 case of stomach flu in his class. In actual fact, there were already 3 cases detected from his class as of this morning as I managed to find out from 2 other mummies whose kids are in the same class who told me their kids are also vomiting and they did call the school to inform them in the morning and they too were told that there is only 1 case of stomach flu.
This is not acceptable to me. If there are so many kids falling sick with the same symptoms at the same time in the same class, something is wrong. The least the centre can do is to inform/update me on the actual number of cases and look into the matter instead of telling me that there is only 1 case noted so far (which is not the case in the first place). We mummies are responsible enough to quarantine our kids and inform the school but if the school is not informing the other parents then the rest of the kids in school might also get the stomach virus unknowingly.
I'm writing here to share some of the observations I have made with regards to the school's management since the day I put my son in there with the hope that parents who are considering placing their kids in the centre knows what to expect. I'm currently considering to withdraw him from the school and putting him back with the nanny for the time being while I search for another suitable childcare. Whilst I'm very happy with the teachers at Ichiban, the way the centre is managed and the teacher-student ratio currently does not really agree with me. Its a tough decision for me as my son loves to go to school and he loves the teachers there but when the hygiene issues and my son's health is at stake, I would rather withdraw him then having to worry all the time as I know he's not receiving the due care that is expected of a childcare centre. Sorry if this post is super long. Haha, I didn't realise I had written so much. ;p