Earlier this week, videos of a teacher allegedly mistreating students at Kinderland Preschool @ Woodlands Mart went viral on social media.
The teacher has since been arrested and charged with ill-treating a child.
Source: Claudia Tan on Facebook
Channel NewsAsia (CNA) recently spoke to the person who took the now-deleted videos, a former Kinderland teacher who was upset at the mistreatment of children.
She recorded the videos to gather evidence as the classrooms lacked CCTVs.
Furthermore, she claimed that the principal did not believe her as the other teacher had been there longer.
The 37-year-old, known only as “Teacher B”, told CNA that she had only joined Kinderland at Woodlands Mart in May this year and was still under probation.
Source: Google Maps
She had been assigned to work with “Teacher A”, the alleged abuser filmed in the videos. Teacher A was 33 and had been with Kinderland for over three years.
According to the Kinderland press statement, Teacher A had “constantly received good testimonials from parents” and got along with her colleagues.
Teacher B allegedly witnessed Teacher A mistreating the students on numerous occasions.
She later filmed the incidents to collect evidence as there were no CCTVs in the classrooms.
The viral videos show Teacher A striking a student with a book and roughly grabbing children to force them to drink water. All affected children were under three years old.
Source: Claudia Tan on Facebook
Teacher B said that she brought the alleged abuse to the attention of the principal, Mahirah Yasid, twice.
She told the principal that this was “not the first time” the abuse had happened and that it was still “ongoing”. At that time, she did not show the videos to the principal.
Source: Claudia Tan on Facebook
However, Teacher B claimed that the principal did not seem to believe her as Teacher A had been with the preschool for years.
Teacher B said that she felt “very bad” for the mistreated children. She would even try to take them away from their punishments, only to be stopped by Teacher A.
Not wanting to be part of the culture there any longer, Teacher B left the preschool in late July, less than three months after she joined.
She cited her sick mother as the reason for her resignation as she did not want to be “so straightforward”.
Teacher B went on to share the videos with the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), which contacted Kinderland on 17 Aug to investigate.
Kinderland headquarters began a disciplinary inquiry to address the incident with Teacher A.
The school claimed that she was remorseful and apologised. It also reached out to Teacher B, who denied taking the videos.
Kinderland has since apologised to the affected children and their parents.
It pledged new measures to address the issues, including installing CCTVs in all classrooms at both its Woodlands and Choa Chu Kang branches, where another teacher was caught abusing students as well.
Source: Facebook
The school will also be “fine-tuning” the procedures for staff to provide feedback.
In the meantime, the ECDA and police are currently investigating the case.
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Featured image adapted from Claudia Tan on Facebook.
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