cga.school

I enrolled my two children this year and unfortunately our experience has been extremely disappointi

I enrolled my two children this year and unfortunately our experience has been extremely disappointing.

My son in Year 4 was left without teachers or a proper class for the first two weeks. The school struggled to allocate staff, and even by week four he still did not have a computer teacher. The classes he did attend lacked structure, yet despite minimal teaching time he was expected to complete 1.5–2 hours of homework per subject independently with little guidance.

The teacher responsible for coordinating my son’s learning could only fit us in for a meeting on a Sunday, which was my breaking point. After that meeting it took over a week for her to respond to my follow-up. Communication throughout the process was extremely poor and I constantly had to chase the school for answers. I eventually requested a full refund for my son, which was granted.

My daughter in Year 7 experienced similar issues. Her days ran from 7:15am to 2:45pm (7.5 hours), with around five of those hours spent in online classes with teachers on screens, followed by additional homework afterwards. In my opinion this amount of screen time is not healthy for a child.

The school did not assess her learning ability before placing her and instead placed her wherever there was space available, even though the classes were above her learning level. My daughter already had learning gaps in Maths and English that required support, and placing her into classes without any proper assessment or appropriate placement would only have made those gaps worse.

Another major concern was that when teachers were sick, on leave, or attending school camps, there were no replacement teachers arranged and students were left without proper instruction.

There were also ongoing issues with bullying in the student chat groups. In addition, my daughter was marked absent on occasions when she was actually present and I had to repeatedly follow up with the school to have her attendance records corrected.

Overall, the lack of organisation, communication and consistent student support made this a very frustrating experience for our family. After losing confidence in the program and withdrawing my son, it was not reasonable to continue leaving my daughter in the same situation simply to satisfy a notice period.

As a result, we made the decision to withdraw her early so she could start elsewhere and receive the support she needs to address the gaps in her learning.

While the school agreed to refund my son’s enrolment due to the circumstances, II am still trying to resolve a 50% refund for my daughter, as we are already halfway through the term, which I believe is a fair and reasonable request. Unfortunately, even today we continue to experience a lack of communication and response regarding the letter sent requesting a fair resolution.

Families place a great deal of trust in schools when enrolling their children. Unfortunately our experience has been one of disorganisation, poor communication, lack of structure and inadequate support for students. After only five weeks we were left extremely disappointed.

Date of experience: Mar 06, 2026