Recently, some parents reported that a kindergarten in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, was closed just 5 days after school, and dozens of parents encountered difficulties in refunding.
"Some time ago, we just paid 3980 yuan in tuition, and the child only went to school for 5 days, and the kindergarten was closed. The children had nowhere to go to school, and the tuition fees were only refunded a fraction. At about 13 o'clock on September 11, when the reporter of the Central Radio Network rushed to the Permilo Kindergarten in the new district of Nanchang City, a parent said angrily.
The deserted kindergarten, photo / Photo by Cheng Simeng
The kindergarten closed five days after opening
On September 10 and 11, a parent in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, broke the news on the Internet one after another that the kindergarten his child attended had closed down only five days after the start of school, and dozens of parents had difficulty refunding fees.
A screenshot of a group chat posted by the parent shows that a person with the remark "Principal of Pelmiroche Principal" issued a notice saying: "Due to the small number of kindergarten students, it cannot support the expenses of one semester and is in a state of loss, and after careful consideration, our kindergarten has decided to close the kindergarten." School cannot start normally the next day. The kindergarten has found a nearby kindergarten for children to study, if parents do not want to study nearby, they can come to the kindergarten to discuss refunds. ”
The news left the park's 34 parents dumbfounded.
According to Extreme News, parent Mr. Xie said: "On September 10, Teachers' Day, our parents also wished teachers a happy holiday in the group. At noon that day, the principal suddenly informed that the kindergarten had insufficient students and could not continue. ”
The kindergarten teacher told the Central Radio Network reporter that Pelmiro Kindergarten enrolled a total of 34 students this year, which opened on September 5, divided into three classes, 17 large classes, 8 middle classes, and 9 small classes, and each student costs about 3,980 yuan a semester. Of these, 26 students paid their tuition fees.
On September 6 and September 10, Wan Mou, the deputy director of the park, transferred the application fee of 38,000 yuan and 43,000 yuan for this semester to the director of the park. The reporter checked the transfer records and the group information provided by the students' parents and found that after the kindergarten director Xu collected the transfer fee at 11:24 on September 10, he then issued a closure notice at 12 o'clock on the same day.
Transfer records (Photo by Hu Fei, reporter of CCTV)
On September 10, more than 20 parents of students discussed the situation in the kindergarten, and a dispute broke out between the two sides. After mediation and negotiation, the two parties reached the following agreement: First, the principal would first refund an average equal amount of 20,000 yuan to the above-mentioned parents that night, and then return 15,000 yuan to the parents the next day. Second, the remaining expenses shall be negotiated by the two parties themselves, and if the negotiation fails, the two parties can solve the problem through court litigation. The mediation form bears the signatures and handprints of the principal and parents, and the payment is due on September 10, 2023.
Mediation agreement between Pelmiró Kindergarten and parents (Photo courtesy of students' parents)
However, the parents who broke the news said that from 1 pm on the 10th to 1 am on the 11th, they had been negotiating with the kindergarten for a refund, and finally under the coordination of the police station in the jurisdiction, the kindergarten only refunded each parent 770 yuan.
Parents broke the news online
According to investigations, Pelmiro Kindergarten in Nanchang Xinjian District was established on January 20, 2022, the legal representative is Zhang, and its business scope includes preschool education for children aged 3-6. "The current director of the kindergarten is Xu, she was contracted in August last year, and the legal person information has not changed." A parent told a reporter from the Central Broadcasting Network.
The school's license (photo by Liu Peijun, reporter of Central Radio Network)
Education and Sports Bureau: The park said that the capital chain was broken and it was unable to refund
The staff of the Nanchang Xinjian District Education and Sports Bureau told Extreme News that after receiving the parents' feedback, they immediately coordinated with the surrounding kindergartens with degrees to ensure that their children went to school, and at present, some children have registered in the new kindergarten. The kindergarten involved was a private kindergarten, and the kindergarten said that it was unable to continue to operate due to the broken capital chain, so it chose to close the kindergarten.
"On the 10th, we had colleagues communicate with the principal involved, and the other party said that they currently have no money to refund. On the 11th, we contacted the director again, but no one answered the phone. The above-mentioned staff of the Education and Sports Bureau said that they will continue to coordinate follow-up refunds with relevant departments.
Parents said they would consider jointly suing the school involved to recover the remaining tuition fees.
The sudden closure of the park is not an isolated case
A few days earlier, a similar incident occurred in Zhengzhou.
According to the 21st Century Business Herald previously reported, at 7 o'clock in the morning of September 4, in Zhengzhou, Henan, some parents who were preparing to send their children to kindergarten suddenly received news.
According to reports, the teacher of Zhengzhou Huifan Chaofan Kindergarten released the news of the closure of the kindergarten on the same day in the class group, and informed the parents of the students that the broken capital chain of the kindergarten led to the normal payment of teachers' salaries, no teachers went to work, and the kindergarten was closed until further notice. If the kindergarten cannot open normally, the subsequent tuition fees will be refunded one by one.
Previously, the director of the kindergarten responded to the media that due to the decline in the number of kindergarten students this year, many preferential activities were done before, resulting in insufficient income, so the capital chain was broken, and finally decided to close the kindergarten.
The staff of the Xinzheng Municipal Education Bureau said that Huifan Chaofan Kindergarten is a private kindergarten and is a government-supervised kindergarten. At present, kindergartens are no longer open, and the Education Bureau has also intervened to actively deal with the aftermath.
In the future, kindergarten closures may not be the only case.
Xiong Bingqi, president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, believes that the closure of private kindergartens due to the crisis of student sources cannot be regarded as the business of private kindergartens themselves, and government departments should actively act to optimize the allocation of preschool education resources in the context of the decline in the birth population to ensure "good education for young children".
The number of students has decreased, kindergartens have begun to be withdrawn, and rural kindergartens have been started. In August this year, the Education and Sports Bureau of Dengzhou City, Henan Province, issued a reply agreeing to abolish 22 primary and secondary schools and kindergartens located in townships and villages, and 7 rural kindergartens to be converted into primary school classes.
"The current outflow of school-age population in the countryside means that small-scale schools will be the norm in the future, and more and more central schools will become small-scale schools, and more and more teaching sites will disappear and become shell schools." Liu Shanhuai, a professor at the China Rural Education Development Research Institute at Northeast Normal University, said at the seminar.
The impact of population decline on kindergartens will continue to be transmitted to primary and secondary schools. Liu Shanhuai introduced that he investigated a county-level city in the northeast and learned that the city's newborn population will be about 1,200 in 2022, and local officials said that three to four hundred people will flow out in the next six years, and by the time they enter primary school, the city's first-grade school-age population is only eight or nine hundred.
"If you don't take into account their distribution, it means that one primary school in the city is enough." Liu Shanhuai said.
Xiong Bingqi introduced at the seminar that some principals of small-scale rural schools reported that the simple and sudden withdrawal of small-scale schools has hit the school staff harder, and local governments should fulfill their responsibility for education investment, ensure education investment in accordance with national requirements, and cannot withdraw schools due to financial pressure.
Niu Jianlin, a researcher at the Institute of Population and Labor Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the development of education is a matter of people's livelihood and public undertakings, and it cannot be simply laid out from the so-called economic benefits or efficiency, but must closely follow the actual needs.
[For the full content, please click: Excess preschool education resources, many kindergartens are withdrawn]
Source | 21st Century Business Herald (Reporter: Wang Feng), Central Radio Network (Reporter: Hu Fei, Liu Peijun), Extreme News
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