Curro Academy Wilgeheuwel

My daughter has been in Curro Academy Wilgeheuwel for 4 years now, and every day I regret enrolling her in this school. All that matters to them is money, swopping High School and Primary School buildings is proof of that, make more room for more kids right?

Over the time my child has spent at this school I have made comparisons to public schools.

•Curro offers less subject choices in Grade 10 – 12 than most government schools. (They literally offer the basics) On their website they do stipulate having wider subject choices which are digital but never mentioned those when choosing subject choices for Grade 10. I assume they don’t actually offer them considering their staff turnover or lack of staff in the school.

•The office staff are very unorganized and have very little knowledge of what is going on in the school. They will send 2 letters out on the same topic which never correlates. Times are a big issue in that school, events are rarely finished on time, I have often waited to collect my daughter from an event and waited well over an hour of the time they stipulated it finishes. They lose paperwork or mix up payments.

•The parking in this school is **********, they didn’t plan this very well or they just keep enrolling more students above their capacity.

•This school doesn’t really offer much for the fees you pay, no swimming pool, barely any trees, the primary school only put in jungle gyms recently, the bare minimum is offered here, kids are expected to sit in the scorching hot sun during sports days. Looks more like an office block than an actual school with no attempt at improving the environment.

•The sport there is very limited, aswell as the P.E teacher barely doing any actual physical activities with the kids during Physical Ed period. (High School) barely even present.

•The school is loud about anti-bullying, yet the teachers are the biggest bullies of all. Like shaming students as punishment by reading out their exam marks infront of the whole class. (grade 11 maths teacher). Shame on you. They insult the students openly with no shame, put the students down instead of motivating them. There are many instances of bullying I can mention but the list is just too long. My daughter is always telling me “it’s like walking into the pits of hell voluntarily everyday” The teacher lack sympathy and understanding.

•Some of the teachers lack the teaching skills or are just not interested, one of the grade 11 teachers makes the students watch you tube videos. The LO teacher loses the assignments to often. And often the teachers discuss inappropriate things with the students or shares their personal life stories with them.

•When an incident happens with an unruly student at the school, the whole school suffers for it..i wont mention the incident here..but because of that the school bathrooms got locked for a couple of days resulting in students not being able to use the bathroom all day.

•They run the school like the military, have to get a signed permission slip before even using the bathroom.

•They more worried about the students nails and hair when there is way more serious things happening in this school.

There is so much more that I can say about this school but honestly the more I write the more frustrated I get. Us as parents work hard to send our children to a school in the hopes they will get the best education without compromising on their happiness, but this school hasn’t offered a good education or happiness for my daughter. It has been an extremely unpleasant experience at this school.

The sad thing is this school could be great, it has potential if the staff would just show initiative, compassion, enthusiasm and were more passionate about teaching. I understand that its hard work especially when there is unruly students, but students that are well behaved shouldn’t have to suffer because of the bad apples. The principle needs to take a hard look at the reviews about Curro Wilgeheuwel which 90% are bad and reevaluate a lot things in this school.