In a shocking turn of events, parents of children attending the “Elephant Mom Kindergarten” in Lingshui, Hainan, were left dismayed when the kindergarten abruptly closed its doors last November, leaving them in the dark about the fate of the tuition fees and teachers’ unpaid wages they had entrusted to the institution.
Reports from mainland China’s “Flourishing News” revealed that the incident occurred on November 23, 2025. Multiple parents recalled the fateful morning when they had dropped off their children as usual, some even making payments for the new semester’s fees and extracurricular activities. However, they were blindsided in the afternoon by a phone call from the Education Bureau informing them of the abrupt closure of the kindergarten. There had been no prior notice provided by the kindergarten management, leaving both parents and teachers completely unaware.
What added insult to injury was that prior to the sudden closure, the kindergarten had enticed parents to prepay fees under the pretext of a “joint education” scheme, promising a 10% annual interest return on a 3-year tuition payment plan and using interest as credit towards fees. Numerous parents, lured by these false promises, ended up losing tens of thousands of yuan in advance payments.
In response to the situation, the kindergarten’s management claimed that the institution was over 8 million yuan in debt, with over 1 million yuan owed in salaries and social insurance for staff, rendering it financially unsustainable and forcing its closure.
However, parents have raised suspicions about the kindergarten’s practices of collecting fees in advance, signing “loan agreements” to raise funds, defaulting on rent and wages, and the sudden shutdown, which mirror similar “prepayment” disputes seen in gyms and beauty salons in the past. They are now urging the relevant authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter.
Statistics show that the number of private kindergartens across China decreased by 37,700 from its peak in 2019 to 2024, with an estimated closure of around 26,000 kindergartens projected for the year 2025, totaling nearly 50,000 closures over a two-year period. Among these closures are cases similar to that of the Elephant Mom Kindergarten involving substantial prepayments.
For instance, in August 2025, the “Sunshine Rain Kindergarten” in Xinyang, Henan, collapsed, with the owner fleeing with fees of hundreds of families; in July 2025, the boss of the “Love Baby International Kindergarten” in Wuhan disappeared after collecting around 1.7 million yuan in fees, prompting hundreds of parents to initiate a rights protection campaign.
Blogger “moonhok” highlighted in an article that due to the lack of effective third-party supervision and fund custody mechanisms in mainland China, victims of private education institution collapses struggle to receive adequate compensation for their financial losses even after legal action is taken.