Eilmar Montessori School & Day Nursery

It has taken me some time to write this review due to the undue trauma and stress that Rajan ( manager) and his mother Tina ( owner) caused my family, but I felt it only right and important to share our horrendous experience with parents who are considering this nursery or those that are currently attending and are unaware of the scandalous way in which they operate. My Daughter started attending Eilmar in 2019 when she 14 months old and we were relatively happy with the care provided by Trisha and her team. I would question the claim that they are a Montessori considering that only one member of the entire team are trained in Montessori, but regardless of this my daughter seemed happy. The problems arose with Rajan and Tina (nursery management) when our daughter was approaching 3 years and was starting to ‘benefit’ from the government funded 30 hours free child care scheme. I applied for the government scheme and reached out to Rajan to ask how financially this would affect our payments. My daughter attended 3 days a week costing around £900 a month and I was surprised that despite receiving ‘30 free hours’ a week our monthly payments were only reducing by roughly £300 a month. When I questioned Rajan on how this worked out he refused to give me an adequate explanation. However after seeking advice from friends whose children were attending other local settings I became more confused as to why I was still paying over £580 a month when for the same hours some where spending just £150-£200 with government funding. In order to make sense of the payments requested I questioned Rajan on what the 30 hours funding meant in monetary terms to him. He told me that he only received £2.50 per hour, per child on funding when his rate £6.60 per hour. That didn’t make sense to me why would the government claim to provide free hours if they are only providing the nursery a third of their hourly rate. So I reached out to the FIS team at Hillingdon council to seek further clarity, they informed me that Eilmar were actually receiving £5.80 per child. This meant that Eilmar were in fact profiteering from the scheme earning significantly over their standard daily rate when combining our payments with the funding received . The council intervened and tried to help us come to an arrangement that meant Rajan and Tina were abiding to the terms of a setting that accepted government funding. We worked out with the funding they were receiving we were happy to pay as a maximum of roughly £300 a month ( which we later were informed was still too much) this was accepted by Rajan and Tina and our daughter continued to attend, but word had got out amongst the other parents and quickly Rajan and Tina realised if they accepted they had to reduce our payments they would have to reduce others. So they went back on the agreement and also demanded back payments from the previous months. We of course refused and that’s when the threatening letters and fines began. I was 9 months pregnant at the time and I can’t describe the stress it caused me. Intervention from Hillingdon council didn’t seem to work so an investigation from their counter fraud team commenced but despite this, the threats of retaining our £600 deposit, throwing our daughter out of the nursery and daily fines continued. Once the fraud investigation concluded and the outcome was in our favour we expected at the very least our deposit to be returned but we never received it back as many others have not. Hillingdon however were fantastic and assisted with moving us to another setting with little notice but we are still very much out of pocket.This is an honest account of our treatment and just an attempt to help any others avoid this place. * in response to your response - if you weren’t found guilty of such fraud then why did the council reimburse us the money owed, I also have the letters to prove it. I’m a member of the Ruislip Mums Facebook group happy to provide evidence on there to any one who has questions.

Our son has been attending Eilmar since he was 15 months old until now them he is starting school. We have been very happy with the care our son has been receiving at Eilmar as his confidence and social skills have developed really well and he is well prepared to start school. Food menu is varied from kids' favourite food to noodles with tofu and curries. The app is great for receiving information on his daily activities. They also have extra activities such as IT, Spanish and sports lessons. Eilmar also has good security arrangements and air conditioning which has been really needed during heat waves this summer.

Our son started at Eilmar in 2020 as it was the closest Montessori nursery to home offering the hours we needed as full time working parents. Before his start date I had read and heard many negative reviews about the manager/owner of the nursery, and personally had a few people reach out to me to tell me about negative experiences with him. Given the manager didn’t have a hand in physically looking after our son day to day, we proceeded to send our son and see how it went. The staff responsible for looking after our son always seemed caring, but we did start to notice our son resisting going in to nursery in his last few months and didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much anymore. That, in addition to the below reasons, meant we took our son out of the nursery sooner than planned. 1. Communication about staff leaving/joining was non existent. That was a bit unsettling for us as we saw some of the best staff just disappear and new staff pop up with no introduction. 2. Inability for the manager to correctly calculate the deposit owed back to us. I’m on the fence as to whether this is a genuine inability to do basic math on the managers part, or an intentional means to take more than what is owed (please do read the many other reviews about withheld deposits). My advice is to record every single deposit payment via email and ask the manager to confirm receipt. 3. Rude condescending manager who barely says hello, shows zero interest in the parents and children, makes non-sensical policies and then lives by them as though someone else enforced them. The manager generally gave us a bad feeling from day 1 but we were largely able to avoid direct interaction with him for majority of the time. 4. An illness policy which did not make sense to us and enabled the manager to decide which policy applied based on his own judgement. To cut a long story short, we ended up having our son sent home to isolate for 5 days (while paying full fees) because he had a temperature reading of 37.7°. This was in March when the UK laws were relaxed! We were told that even if we produced a negative PCR test, he would still need to isolate for 5 days (he was negative btw). Laughable logic which was blamed, by the manager, on the DfE giving Eilmar “setting specific guidance”. I called the DfE and they confirmed they do not give setting-specific guidance. When we picked up our son his temp was nowhere near what they recorded and he was behaving perfectly fine. When we called to question why he had been sent home we were then told we could have given our son medication to bring it down just so we could try to bring him back in…?! This was the point where we immediately gave notice for our son to leave the setting. 5. A fee hike in Aug 2021, and another in April 2022 (and I’ve been told yet another one has just been announced). Basically fee increases whenever the management feels like it. The fees are more than nurseries rated Ofsted Outstanding in the area, for far lesser quality of service in my opinion. Our son has since started a new nursery and I cannot believe the difference in the way the nursery is run, and how amazing the experience and relationship with the nursery can be. We really missed out these past two years and I regret not moving nurseries a lot earlier. Please do look at reviews on the Facebook group “Ruislip mums”. It’s hard to determine real and fake reviews on Google but it’s much easier to see which reviews are coming from real profiles on Facebook. I would also recommend looking in to the Ofsted reports of the other nursery (Elms) owned by Swans Day Nurseries ltd, the company which owns Eilmar. [Addition] Our start date was not changed even once. I think you should be careful about lying on review responses. We only asked for an additional day (you were happy to accommodate) & an extra week of settling in which we paid for. In regards to threats, what on earth are you talking about?! Isn’t it funny you did not once mention that you or your staff were threatened until in this review? Ridiculous lies from a below par business.

They overcharged us and I believe a number of parents by hundreds of pounds when we should've received a greater 30 hours price reduction. Their £350 deposit loss if you remove your children within a year is unusual and frustrating compared to other nurseries. I liked the staff, Miss Trisha is experienced and helpful. The opening hours are helpful for those who commute- 7.30am to 6pm. Sometimes can be hard to get through on the phone or get prompt responses to emails. I found them flexible regarding payments though.

My daughter started with Eilmar Montessori since she was 9 months. She is about to turn 1 and absolutely loves going to nursery, a squeal in excitement as she sees where she is going can often be heard at the gates. Developmentally she has come on really well too, she interacts well with other children of all ages and adults. Taylor really loves her food and it shows with the variety she gets. I love that I can check on how her day is, naps, food and regular updates through the app. She always comes home super happy and most importantly well stimulated and ready for a good nights sleep. All this has certainly made the return to work much easier with a happy child at nursery. A happy household with our choice of nursery that’s for sure

My little one started at Eilmar in September 2021 and absolutely loves it. He always come back in a good mood! The staff are super friendly, very helpful and really listen when you want to give feedback. They have been really flexible and have taken on board my comments on my little ones food/sleep etc. I can see a real change in my little one since he started go. Very happy with Eilmar and would recommend to others.

Beautiful Nursery with Beautiful heart people My grandaughter goes to this nursery since May 2021. I am so happy with the care she gets in the nursery and the amount of respect we get as parents and grandparents is beyond expectations. Children's safety and well being is the top priority of this nursery. Every news letter explains the learning intentions, it also explains what we can do at home as parents. The new app allows easy communication and messages are replied prioritising the importance. We were so impressed when explained that replying immediately takes them away from looking after our children, which only made sense when they explained.

The very first experience of having a child in the nursery is always very traumatizing both for parents and the child but after doing the research about various nurseries and Montessories in this area, we as parents decided to go with this nursery. There were mixed reviews for the nursery but there were more positives than negatives thus decided to go with this nursery. We as a parent feel so relaxed and happy by looking at the progress of my daughter. She was only 11 months when she joined and by 18 months we see a different child. She's become so confident and such a good talker. The management is so supportive and all the teachers in her room are so affectionate. They take care of each and every small details about her.

Teachers / Staff has been quite helpful and they share / take the feedback quite well!!!