Pat's Schoolhouse
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Just discovered they have been posting on their websites on the food poisoning. Latest is that they have terminated Mum's Kitchen and salmonella was detected in some of the hospitalised children.
http://www.patschoolhouse.com/resources/latest-news
I was thinking more on this issue and about the need to free up management time for the kitchen. This is more a business friendly decision than a child centric decision. If I do not consider tingkat meals (much less from a less well known caterer as Mum's Kitchen) good enough for my children, why would I be sending my kids to a premium preschool to eat such tingkat meals? I was OK with it initially because I thought there was a lot more involvement from management on this choice. If the whole idea is to save management time, this is not a good reason because it is just a matter of saving salary costs for the business. All the parents of PSH children need to run their households on top of their careers. We may not personally prepare our children's food but surely we spend significant amount of time selecting and supervising the preparation of foods. Taking the same reasoning, we should all be eating tingkat meals so that we can save time to teach our kids to be geniuses.
Nutrition is a very important aspect for preschools. In PRC preschools, I hear that health and nutritional aspects are treated much more importantly. I have not seen any progress in terms of preschool meals even in the supposed premium preschools. Personally I would have included many more organic/ antibiotic free food items or fresh milk instead of UHT milk in the menu but this is clearly still too premium for the local premium preschools.
And there are more well known and bigger caterers out there. Surely it would be better to choose a caterer (if one must) that is of the same standing in the catering world as PSH in the preschool universe. This is even more so from a business risk management perspective. -
Pat’s Schoolhouse has become too commercialised ever since it was sold to Knowledge Universe. A few moms and I were talking about this and realised we all felt the same way (we are all from different branches btw)… For example:
(1) Registration fee was increased to $321
(2) School fees were increased recently (with NO corresponding increase in teacher quality)
(3) Meals for children, which used to be prepared by in-house chefs, became outsourced to a ‘dubious’ caterer which then mass produces its meals and cooks them many hours before consumption
(4) Expanded too many outlets within a short period of time - hence drop in quality of teachers…
I put my second child at Mt Emily (first child was from another branch) and am not very happy with the quality of the teachers in her class, esp the PRC teacher. They are not friendly or engaging… When my daughter and I arrive in the morning, they treat us like we are invisible!! They talk AT the children instead of TO the children. The PRC teacher is stuck up and makes no effort to connect meaningfully with the children or parents. I am NOT IMPRESSED and am looking to change schools, esp now with this food poisoning incident…!! -
My message to Knowledge Universe:
1. Don’t be cheap. Mum’s Kitchen is obviously not the best caterer out there.
2. Watch your class size. Your published class ratio is not strictly adhered to.
3. Improve your parents’ communication and administrative process. A chain with 13 centres can afford to invest in some admin personnel and getting organised is imperative. It is ridiculous that PSH could send me invoicing emails but cannot send me email updates on a mass food poisoning incident.
4. Don’t expand too aggressively. Make sure you get quality teachers and principals.
I think the above is critical to Pat’s Schoolhouse’s business. Calling a spade a spade and cutting out all the warm fuzzy rhetoric. PSH is a business and all of the above issues indicate a tendency to move more mass market than premium. Please have a look at the current profile and background of families. Are these parents likely to want an increasingly mass market preschool solution? -
empressplace:
My message to Knowledge Universe:
1. Don't be cheap. Mum's Kitchen is obviously not the best caterer out there.
2. Watch your class size. Your published class ratio is not strictly adhered to.
3. Improve your parents' communication and administrative process. A chain with 13 centres can afford to invest in some admin personnel and getting organised is imperative. It is ridiculous that PSH could send me invoicing emails but cannot send me email updates on a mass food poisoning incident.
4. Don't expand too aggressively. Make sure you get quality teachers and principals.
I think the above is critical to Pat's Schoolhouse's business. Calling a spade a spade and cutting out all the warm fuzzy rhetoric. PSH is a business and all of the above issues indicate a tendency to move more mass market than premium. Please have a look at the current profile and background of families. Are these parents likely to want an increasingly mass market preschool solution?
have you forwarded this message to the relevant parties? they might/might not be reading this thread -
LOLMum:
the Americans won't know what is happening. Emails will still \"bounce\" back to Patriciaempressplace:
My message to Knowledge Universe:
1. Don't be cheap. Mum's Kitchen is obviously not the best caterer out there.
2. Watch your class size. Your published class ratio is not strictly adhered to.
3. Improve your parents' communication and administrative process. A chain with 13 centres can afford to invest in some admin personnel and getting organised is imperative. It is ridiculous that PSH could send me invoicing emails but cannot send me email updates on a mass food poisoning incident.
4. Don't expand too aggressively. Make sure you get quality teachers and principals.
I think the above is critical to Pat's Schoolhouse's business. Calling a spade a spade and cutting out all the warm fuzzy rhetoric. PSH is a business and all of the above issues indicate a tendency to move more mass market than premium. Please have a look at the current profile and background of families. Are these parents likely to want an increasingly mass market preschool solution?
have you forwarded this message to the relevant parties? they might/might not be reading this thread
Have you all lodge your complaint to MOE / MCYS and NEA ? -
From my understanding, the schools are cooking in-house for the children now. But I heard that it will only be a temp measure until they find a new catering vendor. Actually my son’s center no longer has a proper kitchen. They renovated n changed it into a classroom.
But I agree with all that we are not looking for a commercialized preschool solutions for our children. I believe the children would be better off if the school continue to cook in-house. I actually saw a webpage on facebook titled ‘Pat’s Schoolhouse Should Cook In-house’. It has 14 likes already, including mine. Hope that all of u would go n like it as well. Get as many parents, friends n relatives to like it.
Hope that u could join us in this motion to get through to Pat’s management to take our stand seriously. -
What I don’t understand is how come they could revive the inhouse cooking so fast. They used to have an executive chef (at one time a Caucasian) running the kitchen. Now obviously there is no chef at such short notice. Cooking facilities have been reduced for sure in view of the executive decision to outsource the food. Unless I know the details of how they revive the inhouse catering, I wouldn’t be so ready to endorse this. Our kids might be eating very simple food cooked by the aunties. If they are going to revive inhouse catering, I expect them to hire back the executive chef to plan delicious meals. If parents are too easy on this issue (just as a reaction to the food poisoning incident), we will soon find that our kids may complain about the school food being plain or uninteresting.
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What will it take for some parents to react? This company carelessly continued to use a supplier that had already poisoned people. Do you feel safe trusting your children with an organization that appears to value profit over safety?
Time for people to complain and take action. Withhold fees until they appoint a reputable external food supplier and make daily checks on ALL food delivered to ALL branches . . . -
I am also curious…
Do all the 13 centers use Mum’s Kitchen?
If so, why are only some centers affected?
Does Mum’s kitchen serve all 13 centers the same menu everyday?
My heart goes out to all those who are affected. Hope the kids get well soon! -
Agree with empressplace, I really would expect PSH to put in more thought into the kids’ food. Cos nutrition is really important and affects not only their physical growth, but their intellectual development as well.
Actually, I was prepared to close one eye and prepare my own food for my kid, but all of the principals whom I spoke to discouraged me from doing so because they wanted kids to have the same experiences and didn’t want any kid to appear different from the rest! Win liao… I keep quiet when you don’t serve the type of food that I want my kid to eat, but you also don’t really want to help me give my kid what I want her to eat. I seriously think that my kid has been falling sick because she hasn’t really been eating a balanced meal.
So far, my kid’s class size has been okay, and her teachers are not bad. The fact that my kid loves school and likes her teachers shows that they must be doing something right. Her teachers and principal are nice and helpful, so I think it’s really more of a management problem.
Less commercialism and more heart please? Let’s hope that this unfortunate incident will serve as a wake-up call.
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