Before/After Student Care Centres

[mstan]

I’ve seek enquiry on one of the daycare centre around my around… The fee is $250. They prefer kids not to shower during the day as they have schedule like : -


1) Eat breakfast (can don’t eat if kids already eaten at home)
2) School homeworks
3) English & Chinese spellings
4) Their in-house homeworks
5) Lunch (15 to 20mins)
6) Go off to school…

I feel that the schedules are abit stress & tiring as kids has to stick to their schedules, they have to attend another half day school lessons… Seems like no rest day…

Are all before & after daycare centre the same?

Not sure whether to pay $300 for no guidance at all or go to this $250 with lotsa guidances…

If I go to $300, I still have to let my girl attend the evening tuition lesson.
If I go to $250, I din not let my girl attend the evening tuition lesson.
Any suggestions / opinions, pls?

[ChiefKiasu]

That sounds like exactly what student care services do. These are in effect glorified tuition centres. Personally I find Before School care to be less meaningful than After School care. They have a tendency to tire out children before the main event of the day, which should be school itself. Regardless, these services can achieve the aim of getting kids to finish their homework in time before lessons, an objective not to be under-rated. Also, they help kids form very good friendships from an early age, especially if the children are mostly from the same school.


BASC services are most effective if your child starts from P1, because that gives them to start together in a group that is new to each other. If you start at a later level, most children would have formed their own cliques… which means your child is effectively the new-kid-on-the-block and will have to deal not just with adjusting to the group, but also to get used to the regimented routines.

The not-so-good part of BASC services is the mix of teachers that manage the students and the different ages of the children in the mix. It’s kind of like a mini school in itself. The teachers are normally not certified, and you don’t get to evaluate how good their teachings are. So you cannot customize the tuition services to cater to the strengths and weaknesses of your child. Also, due to the amount of time the children spend together, they tend to influence each other a lot, which may lead to your children being exposed to bad company at an early age. It all depends on the effectiveness of the BASC teachers to recognise the signs and nip the problem in the bud.

Like everything else, not all BASC are the same, but you may be limited by what you can choose since you most likely would need them to be near the school itself. Most important thing is to talk to the principal and teachers yourself to guage their expertise and commitment, and to find out what the student-teacher ratio is.