I got my kid admitted to CMR in LKG after 1 year of Montessori in another school at age of <4. The main reason was proximity as I did not want my kid to travel too much in an unsafe school transportation of Bangalore at this age. I knew that there might be some compromise on quality of education, however I did not know that this place exists only to mint money and exploit parents. Rather than imparting knowledge, the focus is on passing their judgment and demoralizing even at such a tender age.
Out agony started at the time of admission in month of September, when we were called for an interview. My kid’s little high on energy and was not ready to take on the typical Q&A(colors, alphabets, numbers etc). I was shocked when the interviewer asked me, "Was your delivery Normal? Why is he not able to tell colors and answer my questions". At this point I thought I am done with this place. However when coming back to the tradeoff between safety and quality of education, I again chose safety.
After the interview where main objective was to find our salary and standard of living to afford their exorbitant fees, we were told that we could take admission and were asked to pay the full one year fee(approx 1 lakh) latest by October and it should be in "CASH" only. WOW I thought, I have never seen such an organized daylight hoarding of black money. 70 students in two sections taking approx 1 lakh, 6 months in advance in CASH, awesome business with no tax. I was further amazed when I could not see CMR’s name anywhere on the receipt. The name was "ShreeKrutha Nursery School" i.e. a school which nobody knows exists within CMR NPS, mostly to evade taxes and generate some real quick black money.
I had to further pay some 1500 bucks for books worth 200-300, ~3000 for school dress worth 500-600 and compulsory NIKE shoes from a specific vendor(again collusion to make even more money)
When school opened in month of June, I figured out that in a class of 34 kids, only one teacher again flouting the children: teacher ratio rule which specifies maximum of 20:1.
Within few days of starting the school, started getting complaints like your kid does not listen to teacher, he does not sit at one place, why is he not following teacher’s instructions. We are not giving any homework but this is what he is supposed to finish at school, he is not doing it and you know we have just one teacher to take care of so many kids, so please make your kid read and write at home, which he was supposed to do in class. We are sorry but you have to do something about your kid, We think he seriously need counselling.
Makes me feel like I have sent my 4 year old to some mad high school and not in a nursery school. Will surely pull my kid out of this place before the next year.