Don't be fooled by the promises and the beautiful gardens

<p>We decided on Grasslands Baby and Nursery School in Baileys Muckleneuk as the school to send our 1 year old in January 2016. We were impressed with the surroundings and the headmaster, Marlene Greyling, who seemed very friendly. </p> <p>During the months at Grassland it became very apparent that beautiful surroundings and promises cant substitute genuine warmth and understanding for children. The 'teacher' for the 1 to 2 class was highly qualified, but without the warmth and experience needed for small children who still require nurturing. She told us two weeks in that her passion does not lie with teaching and this was very apparent from her behavior. </p> <p>When we complained about the disrespectful way she was communicating to us, she stopped talking to us altogether, so we had no way to know what was going on with our son in the school. We mentioned this a few times to the headmaster but not much was done, we were told to wait till after the June school holidays as they promised our son will be moved away from this teacher. We agreed. Later Marlene told us that they want to move him to an english class in 2017 (can you imagine, a Afrikaans 2 year old who wont be able to speak afrikaans properly yet) otherwise he will be with the same 'teacher' as before. We then decided to remove our child from the school. </p> <p>Two weeks after giving notice, we were called in by Marlene on the friday saying that she does not want our son to attend the winter school program, as he had a difficult week and was hurting other children. This was the first time in months we had any feedback on our sons behavoir, and find it shocking that no communication was received from the school prior to the Friday (as she mentioned that this started on the monday already). Communication at Grasslands is therefore a grave concern (keep in mind that the school charges between R3000 and R4000 per child without food, so one will expect proper service from then). </p> <p>Because our son has never displayed any behavioral issues outside school or prior to starting with Grasslands, we requested CCTV camera footage to discover what exactly was happening in the classroom. This is a service they advertise on their website and one of the reasons we decided on the school. We sent this request to Marlene in writing on the friday afternoon at 15:00, and she read it almost immediately. We also decided to remove our son from the school. We then received a very formal invitation from Cornel Cronje to meet with her and Marlene, which we did on the Monday, Marlene ignored our request for footage and when we asked about this on the Monday she rep**** saying all footage has already been deleted. She admitted to receiving the request in time for us to receive the footage for the week, but didn't do anything about it. We are therefore assuming that something happened to our son in the class they don't want us to know about. </p> <p>In the meeting, Marlene admitted that the lack of communication is unacceptable and that Grasslands was a negative environment for our son. She also agreed to refund us a part of our school fees, something they only did a month later after we had to follow up twice. </p> <p>Since moving our son from Grasslands, he is a different child. He is happy, plays with friends, and is calm and relaxed. He is excited to go to school. We are feeling guilty that we didn't read the signs earlier but am so thankful that we made the right choice to move him. We have since heard several other complaints from parents as well. </p>