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May 26, 2016

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Home » Metro » Education

Preschool interview training agency ordered to stop enrolling students

By Yang Meiping and Hu Min | May 26, 2016, Thursday | Print Edition

A popular preschool education consulting agency has been ordered to stop enrolling new students for its training sessions because it is not legally authorized to provide such training, according to officials.

Kuno Method is one of the most popular preschool training agencies in the city, offering classes to prepare children between 3 and 6 years old for interviews at the city’s top primary schools.

The education bureau in Xuhui District, where the Kuno Method’s headquarters is registered, has never received an application from the company to offer a private non-diploma educational program at its premises, according to a notice jointly released yesterday by the bureau and the district market supervision office.

Launched in 2007, the training program has been popular with parents because they believe it can give their children an advantage when applying at prestigious schools.

This year, 37 of Kuno’s students are enrolled at Shanghai Experimental School and 26 at the Shanghai World Foreign Language Primary School, according to two bulletins on a wall at Kuno’s outlet in the Changning District.

An investigation was launched after hundreds of people were seen queuing to register their children for a training session outside Kuno’s outlet in Changning District on Tuesday.

The registration would not begin until yesterday afternoon, but some parents and grandparents started to line up outside the outlet from Sunday.

By Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of students were waiting for about 110 places for children aged 3 and 4.

Some parents clashed with people they accused of being scalpers on the scene.

Those people were said to offer their places in the line for 1,000 to 5,000 yuan (US$153) each, an old man who refused to be named told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

Police were called and district education bureau staff arriving on the scene found that the outlet had no educational training certificate.

Yesterday morning, authorities launched an investigation of the company’s six outlets and ordered Kuno to suspend its classes in some districts.

However, about 20 people were congregating outside the company’s Xuhui headquarters at noon yesterday even though the company’s door was locked. A woman who said she was trying to get an application number for her granddaughter refused to comply when a security guard asked her to leave several times.

The company said yesterday morning that registration was suspended at all of its six outlets across the city and that a new time for registration would be announced later.

A Kuno official surnamed Zhang told Shanghai Daily that the company would cooperate with authorities with the investigation and that classes for current students would not be affected.

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