Earlwood Montessori Academy Child Care Centre

Earlwood Montessori is our second home. My eldest son has been here since January 2022 and we absolutely love the educators at this centre. As a mother of a neurodivergent child navigating the education system, the educators here go above and beyond to help and support our family. They are an inclusive centre with highly experienced and caring educators. They have worked with our speech therapist and Occupational therapist to incorporate methods for our son to expand on his skill set whilst he's at the centre. As this is our final year before my son transition to big school, the educators have been absolutely wonderful in helping us with getting ready for this with all the extra reports needed. Miss Josephine has been our son's educator for the majority time he's been here and even though she has many more responsibilities now at the centre I still get the full update from her daily. We love Earlwood Montessori Academy and will miss the centre and educators greatly next year.

The centre was once an amazing place to send your children to, until Ms Peta Ms Chanel and Ms Josie, where put in charge and all of a sudden your child’s best interests were no longer valid!! There bad attitudes forced me to remove my child from the center as I no longer felt my child was happy at the centre and was not treated with kindness. Another factor was putting non speaking English people in the preschool room and having two males in the preschool rooms at the same time. It is such a shame, when Ms Claudia was running the centre it was a place of happiness and respect.

I highly recommend Earlwood Montessori Academy! From the moment you walk in, the staff at the front desk make you feel welcome and at ease. The educators are simply amazing – caring, attentive, and passionate. My child has been going there for around 4 months and is thriving and loves his days days there.

I’m sure my experience with the centre doesn’t reflect everyone’s experience but we recently pulled our 17 month old out of the centre after she had a fall and got a cut near her eye and no one saw what happened. This was really upsetting as her eye ended up being a bit swollen (and has scarred) and when we asked if it was possible to go through cctv to find out what happened reception was really dismissive. When they did go through the footage it turned out another child pulled her and they both fell but something like this could have been easily preventable if the educators were actually watching the kids. The pre toddlers room which my daughter was in was really chaotic because they mix the kids at the end of the day which is fine but there are only 2 educators watching everyone (2 educators to approx 14 children) while the remainder are busy cleaning/ doing everything else. We had one educator who was a main fixture in our child’s room not know her name and was really unapproachable and quite dismissive. Even the centre manager couldn’t get her name right I had to correct her every time. It literally felt like they did not care and you are just a number. I remember trying to ask the educator where my daughters things were and she would just point for me to get her things myself or tell me to wait for someone else to help me as she was too “busy” it was also impossible to ask how my child’s day was as she just didn’t have time for me. No one seems to have time because they’re busy cleaning. This centre from my experience is not very caring or nurturing. We had to pick up our child too when she was sick and crying and the same educator who didn’t know her name did not seem to care. She simply was holding her hand to lead her back to the group and the ratio of educators to children is always off. The correct amount are probably rostered on but they’re never with the children they’re cleaning or doing other tasks. My daughter has been sent home with a soiled diaper and I’ve seen her try to get on the mini slide with no assistance because everyone is too busy to care … she looked upset and could have injured herself if I wasn’t there in time and it just wasn’t a great environment. I’ve also seen babies topple it’s just total chaos. They’ve mentioned they’re implementing some changes so hopefully it will be better but I would be weary of sending your children here … we had a terrible terrible experience and felt like it was more money focused and I would hate for anyone else to experience the same we did in the pre-toddler room.

I cannot express my how I feel about this centre, the centre is absolutely amazing, staff interactions are always so heartwarming, the centre supervisor Claudia always goes to the ends of the earth to make sure my family and children’s needs are met. The staff have always been so amazing with my children and treat mine and my husbands children as if they are their own! I have been here for almost 2 years now, and my children come home with constant smiles on their face talking about their friends and teachers. My love for this centre will always be there! Thank you for the amazing effort that that Claudia and her beautiful team put towards all of the families at the centre !! Your hard work never goes unappreciated!!!!