Pros
Health insurance Amazing work colleagues
Cons
Beststart have the tendency to do as most companies have in the past to neglect their centers that have been running for a long time and focus on forever expanding their name. We are understaffed and our children are suffering for it. They have strict policies in place that favour the parents wishes rather than the people who are actually in the centre. Some of our policies go beyond the respect of privacy for the families we support by displaying their contact information in the classroom if their child should have any dietary requirements or allergies. I cannot imagine parents would feel comfortable having this on display for anyone who enters the room to see, including staff, parents, cleaners, maintenance and of course visitors. The teachers are given a tremendous amount of work to do off the floor which are crucial for our children to thrive and learn. Whilst this is so beneficial for our children and a crucial way of keeping contact with the parents, we only have 2 hours a week to complete it for a monthly basis. Whilst 8 hours a month does sound fantastic, we have to get monthly stories for children written, research and document our professional development logs, prepare any resources that may be needed in the classroom, update individual learning plans for all key children and of course complete courses given to us from our managers or staff of head office which on average tend to take an hour or 2 give or take. Doing all of this in 2 hour increments becomes very challenging when you are writing for 16 children. Keeping in mind that this is just the standard teachers. The head teachers have almost double the amount of work and receive sometimes only 2 additional hours per week.That's if they are able to get off the floor for that extra 2 hours. Our managers are worked to the absolute core. As the captain of our ship and the one who deals with the brunt of rude parents, disrespectful comments and of course the money hungry head office employees. It is heart breaking to see these managers get beaten down so much by this business and yet they keep going. Most importantly our children, the ones who suffer the most from the greed of this business. We have been bombarded with ridiculous ratios of 1:10 from 2 years and over, where the company can make a huge profit by filling up their sardine cans. Our children are over stimulated and put into a space where the teacher cannot give them the proper care and education that they deserve because 34 other children need it as well. From my perspective alone, we rely on getting plenty of absences so we can have that quality time with our kids and create amazing learning opportunities for them. Our children who may need extra support are blatantly ignored by the ministry of education. Whilst this isn't an issue solely based on the work of beststart as a company, they do nothing to help us support them. Those children often get classed into the naughty or hard to handle categories and rather than receiving extra care, they are left to go to school with a 4 year old check from their school stating that they are difficult and often cause disruptions. Beststart is not a company I would recommend for anyone to work for. Atleast until they sort our their quantity over quality issues.