SINGAPORE: Another parent has claimed in a public Facebook group that her son, who attends the Kinderland preschool at Sunshine Place, was “controlled” by an English teacher who tied a belt around his waist to prevent the child from moving or walking around.
The parent, Joyce Lee, shared her account after a Kinderland teacher was fired, arrested and charged with child ill-treatment after videos of her rough-handling her young wards went viral on social media.
Sharing photos of her son restrained in his seat, Ms Lee said that this incident happened in April this year. She zoomed in on one of the photos through the school application and found that her son and another boy were tied to the chair with a belt around the waist.
Ms Lee wrote on the ‘Childcare in Singapore’ Facebook page: “I saw a school update on the school app and upon zooming into the picture, I saw something on his pants. There was another boy with a belt on his waist too.”
Ms Lee was furious and confronted the school principal. Ms Lee added that the school principal “said that it was because my son did not want to sit down for a group photo and was pushing the chair around. So the English teacher went to take a belt from the infant class to belt him down.”
The principal apparently also added that the belt had “only been used for 2 weeks on my son everytime during english class…She even said my son like the belt whenever it was being used during the English class and laughed.”
Ms Lee questioned, “Is that going to make me feel better? It’s so dangerous if he wants to come out of the chair and might fall flat on his face!”
The concerned parent withdrew her son from the preschool in June. She wrote to Kinderland HQ but apparently received “just the same PR answers sorry here and there and reassured the teachers mean no harm.”
Ms Lee added, “I managed to speak to another mummy, and apparently the belting has been going on at least since 2 years ago.”
The Kinderland Choa Chu Kang branch involved in the child ill-treatment incident broke out again. Some parents shared that their children were tied to a chair by an English teacher many times to prevent the child from walking around.
The parent, Joyce Lee, shared in a public Facebook group that she raised her son’s experience after watching a video of a Chinese teacher from the same branch and said that the two teachers accused of child ill-treatment were also her son’s teachers.
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