Puddle Ducks Franchising - Baby Swimming Lessons Franchise UK - Crewe

Steven Young

My daughter has been with puddle ducks for 3 years, until a couple of months ago I would have given an extra star not just 5, but I have been forced to remove her from the lessons because of another child’s extremely poor behaviour and sometimes dangerous behaviour both poolside and in the water, including pushing other children out of the way on wet slippery poolside floor right next to the water, grabbing hold of and pushing other kids around in the water, and being a constant distraction during the lesson to the point where the teacher is spending 5-10 minutes out of every half hour lesson, just on this one child. This has been going on ever since my daughter moved up to level 4, I have complained several times to the office about it, not being value for money as a portion of the lesson is wasted on 1 child with behavioural problems, and the nature and potential consequences of the dangerous pushing and shoving poolside and in the water, it got to a point where I said enough is enough and if it’s not dealt with satisfactorily I would not be continuing with my child’s lessons, the office staff, after consulting with another teacher, agreed that this girls behaviour was not acceptable and informed me that they had taken steps between the office and the regular teacher, and that this girls parents would be required to supervise her for every lesson going forward, both for the other childrens wellbeing and the functionality of the lessons. I agreed to continue paying for my daughters lessons, only on the basis that it would be a permanent thing that this problem child would be permanently supervised, I was promised by both the regular teacher, and the office staff, that this was going to happen.
2 weeks her father supervised her, (quite clear from seeing the mothers nonchalant/passive attitude to seeing her child’s disruptive mess that she doesn’t care so not at all surprised when the mother stopped bringing her to lessons when someone was required to stay), those 2 lessons were perfect, no problems whatsoever. 3rd week…teacher allows the parents to leave her unsupervised again…straight back to square one. I counted in my daughters final lesson, 19 times the teacher had to stop the lesson to deal with this child’s behaviour, twice she was made to sit on the floor out of the pool, and once pushing other kids out of the way in the water.

I feel it has been very poorly managed, 1 child has been prioritised over the other 5 in the lesson for some unknown reason, and I was deliberately deceived by both the teacher in person and the office staff on the phone by promising this bad kid would be supervised permanently going forward, I was obviously told that to shut me up for a couple of weeks so I wouldn’t withdraw my daughter from the lessons.
I received an obligatory apology from the branch manager which was pretty much the obvious you’d expect, “we’re very sorry to hear about the issues you’ve been having during your child’s lessons… etc etc”, but when I replied saying how annoyed I was that I had been lied to, I got no response after that.
On the plus side they did refund the outstanding lessons I had paid for straight away.

The teacher is excellent and a really nice guy, the office staff have always been great, but it seems political correctness has been put ahead of what’s right or wrong by allowing a child with problems to adversely affect the swimming lessons for 5 other kids.

People who have children with behavioural problems need to take responsibility for them and manage them, not leave it to swimming teachers and stand at the side at the end of the lesson grinning when their child is being disruptive.

Unfortunately I won’t be recommending it after this fiasco.