Wā Ora Montessori School

My god, if I could give a minus 5 star review I would. Our experience over the last nearly 2 years has been horrible. In my opinion as set out below I put this down to the inexperience of the teacher and the outright poor management by the school of the implementation of a brand new un montessori trained teacher. It feels as though the school just hired an inexperienced teacher and left her to it. If you have the courage to raise your concerns about the lack of education taking place in the classroom as I did, I believe the school will masquerade the issues as “Montessori special character” as it did with my complaint. This seems to be a blanket response for genuine concerns and a way for them to be swept under the carpet. The school expects nearly $1000 a term for this “Montessori experience” yet for my son’s first 2 years in the primary school he has not had a Montessori trained teacher. Even now, the teacher has apparantly finished her Montessori training but is still only provisionally registered. I heard quite a few other parents stopped paying this “donation”because they did not believe a Montessori curriculum was being delivered so we too stopped paying. Our son in Kauri class then got his new teacher in, who had never actually been a teacher before, this was her first class as the main teacher and she decided to “do away” with work books. I asked if I could see an example of my sons writing after having major concerns in this area, only for the teacher to tell me the children do the writing on pieces of paper and then the children do whatever they like with them without out them being checked by the teacher. She literally said “why do I need to check their work” while in the same conservation saying “writing is something that needs to be assessed”. We got 8 months into the school year with the teacher having absolutely no writing, not one single piece of writing to show us from our son and our son could not even write the alphabet. We took charge and stepped in. We have had to teach the basics at home and since we began the teaching our son at home he has improved but it is us who is doing the heavy lifting with the teaching. Our son is about to turn 9 and does not know how to write his numbers the right way. I believe this is due to the fact that they don’t use maths books!!!! The principal told me he was excellent at maths “but I won’t see any evidence of this because they don’t use maths books”. We are now taking charge of maths and will be doing this at home. Our child is not a slow learner nor Does he have any learning disabilities. The teacher had been completely unprepared for the parent teacher meetings, terrible at communicating our sons progress, and between herself and the principle, they just contradict themselves. They make promises around measures to be put in place to help our child progress and then do not follow through. In the numerous meetings we had with the teacher and the principal, they would try to propose solutions, with the principal suggesting something, and the teacher sitting there shaking her head in disagreement at what the principal had said they would do. At one stage when we questioned the writing books that the principal had requested the teacher bring in, as the teacher sat there trying to explain that they don’t correct or write in the children’s writing books, and my husband points out an adults handwriting and says “that’s not our sons handwriting” with the principal herself saying “no that’s my writing, I didn’t know we don’t write in their books, I’m not montessori trained in the primary school”!!! My god it’s like the blind leading the blind! We wanted a Montessori education for our child, and believe that it works when there are competent trained people teaching the children, but this has not been our experience from this teacher and the broken promises from the teacher and principal. Strongly recommend keeping your children away from this school.

We have three tamariki, two of which are in preschool and one in primary. We have had nothing but support and care from the school. The teachers are highly skilled and have a deep understanding of child development. We are grateful to have our children at Wā Ora and know that they will reap many benefits from having a Montessori education.

This is not a good place. It's the fake Gucci handbag of schools. All brand recognition no quality to back it up. I have extensive experience in Montessori and this place is not doing it at all well. They are also departing from AMI, the Montessori accreditation organisation. If you look at the good reviews for Wa Ora they were from 4 or so years ago. Management has changed and not for the best. They are not doing anything that isn't well catered for by public schools and community kindergarten. As way of example we had more and better quality learing stories in a month form a good community kindy than we had from Wa Ora in nearly 2 years.

I have had both my children at Wa Ora, one still attends the older child graduated from the High School last year after attending Wa Ora since the age of 3. This school is AMAZING the staff are all fantastic and I believe it is because of them that I have confident capable and resiliant children who are able to achieve anything they want. Thankyou Wa Ora

great school!