Azbuka Russian-English Bilingual School

Lovely school, every child get loads of attention and care would it be nursery or school. Very happy with this school.

To start, it was impossible to get through to anyone at azbuka and it should have been a sign for me not to deal with them ever again as up until now I regret I had to do anything with them. After unsuccessful phone calls, on 19th May 2021 I followed up with an email specifically asking to confirm if they had an available place for our child or a waiting list and I asked to visit the nursery in case they had a place available before their admin finally contacted me. She said we could start straightaway in June 2021 but later suggested to start in august as children were in the process of rehearsing.

Much to my surprise I was informed we had to pay £40 to view the nursery. When I asked Admin why do parents need to pay for the viewing, admin already had a prepared argument that it was a standard practice to take a fee as there were too many parents wanting to view Azbuka and Azbuka staff’s time had to be contributed and they had to interview us and make an assessment of our child. It took a while to finally book the viewing and Azbuka cancelled on us which delayed the visit. On 14th June when I came to view the nursery, the so called interview consisted of us standing next to the door of the classroom and the founder and the teacher reiterating absolutely everything what admin had already told me via phone and our son was just playing in the corner with toys in the room. Needless to say about any assessment.

It is categorically not a standard practice to charge to view the nursery. We visited dozens of English nurseries and not only they didn’t ask for money, they provided with a tote bag filled with bear toy, mask, pen, etc to advertise their nursery. Obviously Russian nursery Vishenka didn’t charge any money either.

I shared with admin that my husband wanted to send our child full time to an English nursery and she was actively advising what should I say to my husband to encourage him for our son to attend Azbuka and why their nursery was different from Vishenka. She told me about difficulties she had with her husband and his family about the importance of the Russian language and how happy her husband is now that their two children are bilingual. I asked if her husband could share his experience about bilingualism with my husband and she suggested that my husband speak to Azbuka’s trustee. She then noted how difficult it was to organise a phone call with their trustee and that it would be taking trustee’s personal time. Since me and my husband decided on the amount of days to be divided between English & Russian nursery and since we would have been taking trustee’s personal time, we obviously didn’t disturb him unnecessarily.

After viewing the nursery, I asked to confirm what days they had available as we had to apply at the English nursery and respectively had to choose the days but I received no response. I emailed again and admin stated that the deadline to apply for the nursery finished on 24th May and if they would still have any places left, she would let me know in 2-3 weeks. Which was unacceptable as on 19th May admin clearly stated they had available place straightaway. As a result we could not choose English nursery and confirm the days. I emailed admin again but to my astonishment she stated they were refusing us a place based on the fact that my husband did not support bilingualism and we did not contact their trustee.

I tried to bring common sense and logic to the situation, explain our desire for our son to study at Azbuka and the fact that Azbuka was closer to our home than Vishenka. As well as my husband called and emailed all of them including trustee explaining that there was misunderstanding but they either didn’t respond or reiterated that their decision was correct but I could follow their events and open days on facebook and Instagram which absolutely puzzled me. I asked it meant they simply didn’t have a place available but they didn’t respond, I emailed them again asking to either provide a place or return £40 so I would not have doubt in their competence. Not only there was no apology that they screwed the promised place at the nursery, they also refused to return £40 for so called interview and more shockingly they stated I was threatening and slandering them and any future communication would be considered as harassment after my kind email to either provide the place at the nursery as promised or return £40. I will repeat myself once again, if they had no intention to mislead about availability of the place at the nursery, then it would be fair Azbuka returned £40 for the interview. This is the least they could do considering the inconvenience all that saga caused us.
Also, I have to underline that I will not be deprived from my right from sharing my experience with Azbuka with anyone in the world and I will not hesitate to take this case further, if needed. Luckily all communication was recorded. And to be fair, I still cannot believe the above happened and to what absurdity they managed to twist the facts, events and all this happened with the people who work in education with children.