Rise Early Learning Epping Road - North Ryde, New South Wales

Pragati Saini

I have been extremely satisfied and happy with Rise, Epping road. I had toured a lot of daycares in the area when finalising one for my son. To be honest, I saw the google reviews before my tour and had second thoughts. But when I toured the centre, met Lani and the educators, I got a great vibe. Zoe, the education lead for babies room is lovely with the babies! The outdoor area for kids play is ample and I particularly liked the indoor-outdoor area for little ones for when the weather is not so good.

My son started the daycare at 11 months old and it took him around 4 weeks to fully settle in. All the educators in babies room were very adaptive of any measures needed to make him feel comfortable, which I am very appreciative of and now he is thriving in their care.

We get regular updates on an internal app and feel very involved in his daily activities.

I couldn't have asked for a better team for my little one 🙂

Bree Little

We absolutely love everything about this center, from the beautiful facilities to the kind and caring educators. We were nervous about starting after having a bad experience at another center, but management and the educators went above and beyond to make sure we felt at home and knew our boy was in good hands.

Marilyn&Gavin Landers

Our little girl started at Rise Early Learning Epping Road in 2023. Drop offs were hard as she learned to settle into a new environment and people. She typically takes a while to warm up to people and places. We were quite worried and nervous at the start because we had gone through negative experiences at two other childcare centres before Rise and here we are, handing over our baby (our only child at the time) to strangers again. We are so thankful to the educators in her room – they really listened to what her routine was and tried their very best to build a trusting relationship with her and us as her parents. We received regular updates about our child through the app and in person at pick ups and drop offs and this was and still is important to us. Our little girl was attending 3 days a week at Rise and by Day 6 (2nd week), one of the educators captured our little girl showing the best smile and laughter – absolutely pure joy. We were so pleased and we felt that our prayers were answered. It has been more than 1.5 years, we have our second bub attending Rise now as well, and she loves it there, too. Although there has been a lot of change in staff members over the past year, we are fortunate that the educators in our children’s rooms have been relatively stable and they are all a fantastic and caring crew. We have also had the opportunity to get to know educators from the other rooms who are passionate about what they do.

We have found the educational summaries and feedback on our children helpful and accurate about their character. We have been able to have open dialogue with the educators and management team about areas for improvement and always found them to be professional and responsive. We feel a sense of community at Rise Early Learning Epping Road that we had not felt before at previous childcare centres.

Tin You

It was a lovely childcare when my little one first joined two and half years ago. Then we experienced extremely high staff turnover from educators to the principles in last two years.
We also had a serious accident which my little one had to attend ER to seek treatment, the centre advised it’s not preventable…and refuse to remove the thing after it caused serious harm to my little one. As a parent I was traumatised for a long time…

It was still blessed my little one developed strong connections and relationships with the educators and peers in the toddler room. However when we transited to the junior preschool room, both her and I are not happy anymore. I received minimal communication/updates each day or even nothing, extremely difficult get to hold the room leader, always having different casuals/educators in the room etc.

JQ Xie

This is my first baby's first childcare so I chose it based on a combination of national rating and online reviews. Even though I don't have a reference point, but as a mother my intuitive feelings on my baby's overall wellbeing and the care provided are always spot on. This center, if I have to choose a word to sum it up, feels so commercial to me without much personal touch, commercial as in all aspects of care. Main points I'm not happy are :

1.too many incidents. This is the main reason to raise my suspicion of my baby not getting effective care. there is always a reason and very often it can be blamed back to us: baby's shoes doesn't have the right sole so slipped over when running, other kids accidentally scratched face, my baby climbed too high on the couch and fell(yes fell while climbing and nobody around?hello?). We've been there for at least a year and initially I thought, yeah kids, they gotta have falls anyway, but later on it came to a this frequency that made me feel quite uncomfortable, and started wondering maybe something was wrong with the care itself. I switched to another childcare that I'm sooooo happy with now and it turned out I've made the absolutely right judgement! despite my baby is growing bigger and runs around much more, my baby NEVER HAD ANY INCIDENTS REPORT in the new childcare in the past 6 months.

2,staff turnover. Turnover is Rise is so high that I'm uncomfortable this is right for kids, especially younger ones. soon my baby is attached to someone and months later they are gone. Some staff look unhappy and we can see certain teachers on their mobile fairly often. There gotta be something wrong with management or culture here : another reason for me to feel it's commercial here. And again, it turned out my judgement is correct: the new childcare that I'm extremely happy with now, has extremely LOW turnover and many staff were there for 10 or even 20 years. We've never seen any teacher on their phone on a regular basis, and again, no incidents, only a very happy kid.

3.other support and services. I received a bare minimum level of admin support in RISE. I only came to realize this when I joined my current childcare where a lovely staff literally lectured me half an hour, on the center itself, how to submit forms ,make payments,how to apply funding and all that sort of things, and many well written summarized pamphlets. I already knew most of these sort of things but I can imagine how helpful this will be for any new families! For Rise, from the tour to Orientation day, to email communications, I have to chase up on things and everything seems a rush. I don't feel any personal touch or genuine care. I guess that's why I say it feels commercial .

I'm sure there are happy parents and happy kids here. And of course there are a few truly lovely teachers as well. But for me it's not the right place and as a mother, I guess the most important lesson I've learnt is that, all these external ratings and reviews are not really that important. Trust your gut feelings as a mother, and be true to how you feel about the service and adapt quickly, as you are the only one who genuinely knows your kids the best.

Erin Morris

This centre is amazing. From the second you walk in the gate you feel welcome. All the staff greet you. Everyone knows your name. It's like a family. My son has had a great time at this facility over the last nine months. The relationship he has with the educators and his peers is phenomenal. The facilities are modern and great. Pick up times are the hardest because my son never wants to leave! I couldn't recommend the centre more highly.

Natalie Davidson

We had an extremely poor experience at Rise.
We were very excited to join as the facilities are beautiful and the educators on the open day seemed engaged and friendly.
Not long after starting, we noticed our 2yo daughter regressing socially and plateauing developmentally. We thought this was expected after starting a new centre and persevered, however every afternoon we were met with frustrated educators who would tell us how grumpy she had been and walk away.
At drop off our daughter would cling to us and be so distressed, the educators seemed to busy to even greet her or say good morning, it became really difficult to leave her.
One afternoon my husband walked in on an educator standing over her yelling at her and pointing in her face. This raised immediate red flags on how she is treated through the day and why she may have been regressing so significantly.
We tried to work with the centre manager, who acknowledged the incident, but the educators would avoid eye contact over the next 2 days and we knew it was not a safe place for our daughter so asked to remove her from their care immediately.
Over the next few weeks we were trying to negotiate exiting without a notice period as we couldn’t bare the thought of leaving her in their care another day. The centre director ‘supported’ by reducing our notice period to 2 weeks. This meant we had to pay for a new daycare and Rise.
I am so happy to say that our daughter immediately returned to her normal happy and intelligent self within a week of leaving Rise, and is extremely settled in her current daycare.
I do truly hope we are the only family to have gone or to ever go through this experience at Rise.

Susie Chong

We honestly feel so lucky to have our two kiddos go here. Beautiful environment, incredibly creative play spaces and rotations and activities, warm and helpful administration for forgetful mums, and above all, passionate educators who build connections with each kid. So special. We came from a different centre a couple years ago, and didn't realise what we were missing out on and how good it could feel.