SINGAPORE: Three employees at a preschool near Buangkok have been suspended following allegations of child mismanagement, the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) said on Thursday (Feb 29).
A parent and the preschool – GU+MMI Smart Kids, which is operated by SMARTBerriis – both made reports to ECDA on Monday.
The agency said it has started investigations, including an unannounced visit to the preschool, a review of closed-circuit television footage, interviews and verification of records.
The police confirmed that a report was lodged and said investigations are ongoing. CNA has contacted the preschool for comment.
The parent, who did not want to be named, told CNA that she went to the police after the preschool management showed her CCTV footage of her son being scolded in a dark room.
The three-year-old previously told her that this was a form of punishment that he received in preschool when he misbehaved. One of his teachers had hinted to her that her son was being unfairly treated in preschool and that she should ask him about it.
When her son mentioned the dark room, she tried to give the preschool the benefit of the doubt, she said.
With only five teachers and around 14 students, the preschool community was small and she trusted the teachers who mostly stayed on when the school went through a change in management.
“Maybe they just want to put him in a less stimulating environment?” she said. But when she probed further, her son said he was scared when his teachers put him in that room.
Although the footage she watched did not have any audio, the parent said what she saw matched what her son had told her. There were two teachers involved – they had angry facial expressions and it looked like they were slamming the door and shouting at her son.
When she asked the school management if they had spoken to the teachers, she was told that their incident reports were different from what was on the CCTV footage.
BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES
Another parent who only wanted to be known as Mr Gerard said his son, who is four years old, also became more aggressive, could not sleep well at night and refused to go to school.
“We just assumed that he was throwing tantrums because we had multiple travel holidays, we had a lot of occasions such as Chinese New Year,” he said.
“We just thought he wanted to stay at home and play … I don’t think many people would assume that oh, my child is getting abused in school or something.”
The couple had started the process of withdrawing their son from the preschool because of his behavioural changes when they received an email from the preschool highlighting a “child mismanagement” incident.
They then decided to ask their son if anything had happened to him. His son said he was locked up in the dark room many times, Mr Gerard said.