Student’s parent

by Guest 3 years ago

My son signed up for O level Chinese in Mar 2019 for Sunday sessions. We paid for a month’s advance fee as deposit whom the teacher-cum-staff claimed that it would be used to offset last month’s fee.

We told her we would be stopping the session after o level Chinese paper in late June / early July and was told the Centre and principal would know what to do for that so there was no need to worry about the fees. After one lesson was Circuit Breaker. I called up and was told by the principal that they would come up with a plan during CB to continue with the lessons. However nothing happened and only after 3 months there were Zoom lessons on 1 June.

That was the start of the problem. The Zoom lessons had no fixed schedule. It was impromptu, haphazard and all messed up. The principal WhatsApp me for the availability of my son for the first zoom lesson. Subsequent sessions were decided there and then. There were 3 zoom lessons a week. Even after CB phase 1, when the Centre was allowed to operate, they continued with the Zoom lessons on top of the face-face lesson on Sunday. Each session was three hours long. With long school hours and other subject tuition lessons to attend, it was impossible to attend all the sessions. Students just joined the session as and when they could. It was completely disorganised and there was no schedule for when subsequent lessons would be. It all depended on the principal’s availability.

The fees was paid every 4 sessions. I subsequently paid two more months of fees when another teacher-cum-staff urged my son to pay for the fees. Only after the fourth payment did we realise that we had overpaid as the Zoom and face-to-face lessons on Sunday added up to less than 4 sessions. We contacted the center to ask for refund of the over-charged fee since the last month’s fee should be deducted from the deposit. The same staff who had rushed my son to pay for the fee told him to attend another session for higher mother tongue to offset the over-charged fee even though his O level Chinese paper was over. This is ridiculous! She also suggested he attend any Science or Math lesson for one session. I was completely appalled. Tuition is not a skill workshop where you learn the skills over one session. We refused to accept the offer and after which the staff refused to answer my call.

I had no choice but to go down personally to the Centre and the principal scolded me for asking her for the money and cursed that my son would do terribly bad for his O level Chinese because I asked her to pay me the over-charged fees. She went on to scold my son stupid for not knowing how to count when the last session was. How were we supposed to count when there was no schedule given to us? I was flabbergasted and a perfect teachable moment for my son on how a commercialized principal could behave. Then she refused to entertain us. We spoke to the same staff who told us off that we should not have come down as Sunday was their busiest day. Then we realised there was discrepancies in the number of hours my son had attended zoom lessons. They recorded more hours than the actual hours. There was no system in attendance tracking as everything was handwritten on a small piece of paper with rows and columns drawn using pen and ruler. She said she would talk to the principal and call me back. Of course this did not happen. I went down to the Centre the following Sunday again but this time, the principal was very nice to me because she was attending to two parents. I demanded for the payment and she gave me all coins with denominations of 10, 20, 50 and $1 which added up to $62. She said take it or leave it! This incident was completely unacceptable and unprofessional. Though tuition Centre is commercialized, there must still be a baseline for the teaching of universal virtue such as integrity to the students who look up to their teachers be it in school or at tuition Centre.

This Centre was really a black-sheep in the service and if you are looking for one, this should never be your option.

Student’s parent

by Guest 3 years ago

My son signed up for O level Chinese in Mar 2019 for Sunday sessions. We paid for a month’s advance fee as deposit whom the teacher-cum-staff claimed that it would be used to offset last month’s fee.

We told her we would be stopping the session after o level Chinese paper in late June / early July and was told the Centre and principal would know what to do for that so there was no need to worry about the fees. After one lesson was Circuit Breaker. I called up and was told by the principal that they would come up with a plan during CB to continue with the lessons. However nothing happened and only after 3 months there were Zoom lessons on 1 June.

That was the start of the problem. The Zoom lessons had no fixed schedule. It was impromptu, haphazard and all messed up. The principal WhatsApp me for the availability of my son for the first zoom lesson. Subsequent sessions were decided there and then. There were 3 zoom lessons a week. Even after CB phase 1, when the Centre was allowed to operate, they continued with the Zoom lessons on top of the face-face lesson on Sunday. Each session was three hours long. With long school hours and other subject tuition lessons to attend, it was impossible to attend all the sessions. Students just joined the session as and when they could. It was completely disorganised and there was no schedule for when subsequent lessons would be. It all depended on the principal’s availability.

The fees was paid every 4 sessions. I subsequently paid two more months of fees when another teacher-cum-staff urged my son to pay for the fees. Only after the fourth payment did we realise that we had overpaid as the Zoom and face-to-face lessons on Sunday added up to less than 4 sessions. We contacted the center to ask for refund of the over-charged fee since the last month’s fee should be deducted from the deposit. The same staff who had rushed my son to pay for the fee told him to attend another session for higher mother tongue to offset the over-charged fee even though his O level Chinese paper was over. This is ridiculous! She also suggested he attend any Science or Math lesson for one session. I was completely appalled. Tuition is not a skill workshop where you learn the skills over one session. We refused to accept the offer and after which the staff refused to answer my call.

I had no choice but to go down personally to the Centre and the principal scolded me for asking her for the money and cursed that my son would do terribly bad for his O level Chinese because I asked her to pay me the over-charged fees. She went on to scold my son stupid for not knowing how to count when the last session was. How were we supposed to count when there was no schedule given to us? I was flabbergasted and a perfect teachable moment for my son on how a commercialized principal could behave. Then she refused to entertain us. We spoke to the same staff who told us off that we should not have come down as Sunday was their busiest day. Then we realised there was discrepancies in the number of hours my son had attended zoom lessons. They recorded more hours than the actual hours. There was no system in attendance tracking as everything was handwritten on a small piece of paper with rows and columns drawn using pen and ruler. She said she would talk to the principal and call me back. Of course this did not happen. I went down to the Centre the following Sunday again but this time, the principal was very nice to me because she was attending to two parents. I demanded for the payment and she gave me all coins with denominations of 10, 20, 50 and $1 which added up to $62. She said take it or leave it! This incident was completely unacceptable and unprofessional. Though tuition Centre is commercialized, there must still be a baseline for the teaching of universal virtue such as integrity to the students who look up to their teachers be it in school or at tuition Centre.

This Centre was really a black-sheep in the service and if you are looking for one, this should never be your option.