My First Skool - A Review

My First Skool, although the largest provider of preschool education programmes, did not impress us at all in their registration and administrative procedures. Sadly, My First Skool, although is the one that comes first to our mind, is not the first school we want to enroll our children into! Here are the reasons:

Six months ago, in May 2011, when we were frantically searching for a childcare centre for our son, our first choice was actually My First Skool which was located just a few blocks away from where we stay. We attempted to walk in for a site visit but the principal, although she was present, refused to see us as she was supposed to be on leave that day and wanted us to make an appointment instead! The teachers that opened the door for us looked blur and couldn't answer most of our questions! I wonder how I could entrust them to coach my son? Anyway, because of the urgency to get him a place, I called the hotline several times to check out the nearby centres and the answers given were all very general and we had to go back to the exact centres themselves to check for details. We were very annoyed by the responses given and never went back again. Fortunately, we managed to find A a childcare centre that is still convenient and A is very well-adjusted and loved by his teachers there.

About three months ago, I registered online to check out the new infant care centre, also My First Skool, set up in our area which is a few streets away for our not-yet-born daughter. I was expecting a call from them within 3-5 days but never did they call once in these months. In fact, I sorta gave up on them already. Today, a call came and surprise! surprise! it was from them and they called to inform that the centre was already over-capacity and if I'm still interested, they will put me on the wait list. I tried to probe further but my questions seem very difficult for the lady on the other side to answer. She had to check before she could answer them. The questions that I had are very straight forward e.g. "What is the max capacity?" and "What's the teacher-to-infant ratio"? I wonder if she's new there? That quite puts me off. I did ask her to put me on waiting list though. However, considering 20 babies with ratio of 1:3.5, hmm... I don't think I'm very keen! Probably, A's current centre is a much better choice for us.

And, I heard they are targeting to open another 50 new centres around the island within 2 years? Good luck!


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