Little Scholars School of Early Learning - Stapylton

Our child attended little Scholars Staplyton for 2.5 years. The first 1.5 years we had such an amazing experience with consistent educators. There has always been a little staff turnover but over the last year before we left it was very high. No one seemed to knew how our child day was as multiple educators were coming in and out of each room and the lack of photos which was a concern for multiple parents meant we had no idea what our kids were up to everyday. Fast forward to our last year, there were signs that the service in our opinion was no longer up to our standard. Our child was 3.5 years old at the time and 6 months to a year before the incident, there was tears every morning and the struggle of not wanting to go to school (This was a red flag that we should have paid attention to). The final straw for us was when our child was pushed by another kid straight onto a concrete footpath. We raised concerns about this particular child a few days before the incident happened as we have witnessed on multiple occasions during our drop off window that this child was pushing other kids as well as babies who were all grouped in the same room during morning drop off. When we received the phone call, I asked immediately if it was this kid and for privacy reasons they couldn’t tell me. We rushed to pick up our child who provided the name of the child who we thought it was and went straight upstairs to see Jess and Miss Nat. They both admitted that it was the same child we had concerns about. We understand accidents happen but it shouldn’t be this severe. Our child had a massive bump, large cut and bruise for several months and a year later there is still an indent on where the impact was. Our child had to have an MRI at such a young age to confirm no internal damage had happened inside the brain. Our 3.5 year old child told us the teacher didn’t see it happen and a couple of kids in class came to the rescue. We can’t prove this but fully believed our child as our child was always responsible and mature beyond the years. The bump was not as bad on the first day so we sent our child to school the next day, we were assured another teacher was put into class to overshadow this child (we were told he wasn’t officially medically diagnosed as needing extra help even though they had spoken to the parents and encouraged them to get a formal diagnosis as the centre had seen some signs). If the center saw signs of a child needing help, they should put an extra person with that child regardless of if there was a formal medical diagnosis for the protection of other children in the class. The following day, our child was pushed over again by the same child and none of the teachers told us. I found out on the drive home and confirmed this the next day. After the 3rd day, the bruising got so much worse resulting in a swollen nose and blood running internally from the affected area. There was no call to us to advise that the head injury had severely gotten worse during the day. We picked our child up noticed her pupil were very dilated and immediately took her to the emergency room. We decided it was not in our best interest to go back, any further impact to the area would make the injury worse. We know there have been other injuries before and after our child caused by the same child. Our child has strived at a new school. It has taken a year to write this review, mainly because we know it was an accident but still believe it could have been prevented with proper management, it has come to my attention over the last year - there has been several negative reviews left quite similar. We had a high risk pregnancy at the time and the best way to not deal with the issue was to just pull our child out of the school. We didn’t need the extra stress. It’s been a year and we don’t know if the center has improved but if your gut feeling tells you something isn’t right it probably isn’t. We entrusted our child for 2.5 years and would like to thank Miss Montana, Miss Olivia and Miss Van who made a difference to our child during her early years.