Friday, November 30, 2012

Pre-school Hunting

Malik will be 3 years and some months in June next year. The time is ripe for him to start school. So last week, Pao and I took a day off from work to look at pre-schools for pogiboy. We took him along. His opinion counts, you know.


My first consideration is whether the school's teaching philosophy is consistent with what I hope Malik would take away from going to school for the first time. I just want him to develop a love for learning. After pre-school, there will be plenty of time to learn about calculus and financial markets. In the meantime, Malik just needs to be curious and have fun with kids his age. That said, our next considerations are (in no particular order) the school's facilities, the quality of their teachers, their location and of course, tuition.

It's good that most pre-schools in Metro Manila have Internet presence. That's really convenient for households like us where both parents work full-time. We need to get our hands on a lot of information and quick. Some don't respond to parent inquiries as quickly as the others though, which is sad but helpful in a way. Those pre-schools that do not bother to reply to our emails get stricken off the shortlist. Yey.

However, very few of these pre-schools post their tuition in their websites. We had to personally inquire at the schools to get the rates, which I am posting here to hopefully help other parents in their decision-making. By the way, as you may already know, fees vary per level. The fees posted here are for kids around Malik's age (3.6 - 4.5 years old). Some schools call that Nursery, others Kinder, still others some odd name like "Master Explorer".


Cambridge Child Development Centre, Mariposa QC - Annual tuition (good for 10 months) P89,452 inclusive of course materials, daily snacks, insurance, 1 centre uniform and 1 movement uniform, and 1 Cambridge bag

Kinder Explorers, M.Paterno, San Juan - Annual tuition P82, 500 exclusive of food, transportation, expenses related to field trips, Kinder Explorers shirt and program costumes

The Raya School, Sct. Fernandez, QC - P65,000

Gymboree Magnolia, Aurora Blvd., QC - Tuition per sem (good for approx. 5 months) P40,000 inclusive of Gymboree pre-school shirt and bag, 1 walking trip, materials used in class and unlimited gym play at any Gymboree Philippines branch

I don't know about you, pero ako namamahalan. :( My parents did not even have to pay close to these figures in tuition to get me through college AND law school. But Pao and I have more or less decided where to enroll Malik of these four. The school came highly recommended by our close friends from college, one of whom is herself a pre-school teacher.

- posted via BlogPress for iPad

2 comments:

  1. Hi! May I ask where you enrolled your son? I'm now shcool-hunting for my daughter. Your recommendation wuld be highly appreciated. Thank you:)

    ReplyDelete

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