A School- Chettinad groups

Hi, my son studies UKG at A School Valasaravakkam. My feedback about A School:

1. Teaching: It was very lite in LKG (they hardly completed alphabets and numbers; I am not complaining though) but in UKG within short period they dumped so much on the kids. He has three subjects now - English, Maths and EVS. Child teacher ratio, I am told is 1:15. Quality of the book content is good. My rating out of 5 (5 being outstanding) would be 4.

2. Infrastructure: It is a residential house with ground and first floor. It could get really noisy as it was not designed for a school. Class rooms have fans fitted but no a/c. No inverter or generator facility. In summer with regular power cuts it gets really hard. My son comes home sweaty most days. School management does not want to spend on generator or UPS unit despite repeated requests from parents. The response we got from the management meeting is, "One hour power cut a day is acceptable. We all grew up in such difficult conditions without power, so it is not bad for the kids to experience it" (not the exact words). They promised to install UPS unit if the power situation didn't improve, but nothing happened.

They have a small play area outside. But it is not designed for child safety. It is full of hard rocks and shard edges.

My rating: 2

3. School Management: In my opinion, as arrogant as they could get. All A Schools are managed centrally by the foundation people and the local school authorities have absolutely no power or say on anything. Parents are non-entities to them. Reaching out to central management is extremely difficult. You can only talk to Admin person in the school, which in my personal experience is of no use. Yesterday, they refused to give back my sons answer papers of the recent test they conducted. I wanted to show his performance to my other kids (yes, I have 2 more and they are studying at PSBB) and also to improve him on his mistakes. In spite of promising to return back the papers the next day, they refused. All the admin person could say is, it is their policy not to give the papers. Anything beyond she needs to get management approval. It really sucks.

I also had a very bad experience of taking to a management person over the phone (after several attempts) and since she could not answer my questions, her responses became very rude and she eventually disconnected the phone.

My Rating: 1

Fees: I don't know how much other schools charge, but I don't feel the service they provide is worth the money I pay. Don't be surprised if out of nowhere you receive a SMS message simply asking you to pay like Rs 9,000 or 10,000 for whatever they call it. They don't bother to properly explain parents before hand on the fees and the details. For them a simply SMS will do the job.

My rating: 2


Overall I will never recommend A School for their management style and absolute disregard for parents. As a parent I feel helpless and frustrated.

PS: My son last year got heavily injured in the school. Apparently the floor was wet because another child had urinated and it was just wiped. My son carrying a sharp pencil (provided by them) slipped and the pencil punctured his ear lob. He had a go through a surgery procedure which required about 10-12 stitches and the wound took weeks to heal. After weeks of agony and spending nearly Rs 12,000, all I got from school was 'sorry'. By no means I expected compensation here but was not happy with the way the school dealt with it; no retrospect nothing. I investigated on my own and suggested them not to use sharp pencils and to monitor kids if the floor is wet!

Hope this feedback is useful to you and others who want to know about A School.

 

Chennai High Court orders action against 36 A-School branches.
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