As I've stated I work for Explore so obviously my opinion is going to be biased, but I do also send my own Children to Explore, not something I would do if I didn?t believe that they were getting real benefit. The nearest centre to me is about 30 miles away, yet my wife is still happy to take the children as she has seen her for herself the benefit.
I believe that £89 a month is fantastic value and we should be singing loudly about the value of our service, we certainly shouldn?t be afraid to tell people at. However some people will make a judgement about the cost before they understand what we do. If you view us as somewhere to ?dump? your Children while you do your shopping then yes £89 is expensive. I believe that £89 (without any working tax credit, child care voucher, Scholarship discount) is fantastic value. Children spend 1h:15m with us for each session and can do two sessions a week, so about 9 sessions a month, that?s an hourly rate of less than £9 an hour, that?s great value and that?s without any of the discounts, that a lot of people benefit from.
All of the centre managers and assistants are graduates with a 2:1 or above.
With regards to teacher comment, as I stated previously we have lots of teachers who send their Children to Explore. We also run classes for Schools. If you look on our website you?ll see a large selection of quotes from teachers saying how good we are:
www.explorelearning.ltd.uk/teacherquotes
I find it really very upsetting to read comments that suggest we rely on people feeling guilty. That?s absolutely not the case, we rely on the fact that we provide a great service and that the Children that are members have a great time and that their parents can see an improvement. I?m not exactly sure of our retention figures but it is well over 90%, people wouldn?t stay with us if we weren?t doing something right. We have a number of centres that have a waiting list of Children who want to join, but because of our 1:6 ratio we cannot accept any more members. I think this illustrates that parents and Children love Explore.
I agree with the comments about software it is possible to get some great resources online and it is possible to spend time with Children tutoring them yourself, but for lots of people they don?t have the time or skills to do this. The software that we use is a resource, it costs us thousands of pounds per centre and it is very good, but as I stated earlier our staff are the most important resource. Explore is not a replacement for School, it is a way of providing your child with additional help in a fun and engaging way.
Please come along for an initial consultation, and see for yourself. You can see how a centre works; your Children can try out the centre and see what they think while you can ask as many questions as you like.