When Miss Wang sent her child to the kindergarten yesterday, she was told that the school has been shut down and her child’s tuition fees would be refunded in accordance to the school’s withdrawal and refund policy.

The school is one of the 160 unlicensed kindergartens that have been closed by the Cangshan government in Fuzhou. This clean-up campaign started in June. An official from the education department of Cangshan district said that the number of unlicensed kindergartens has reached 160 when compared to the 75 formal ones. Most of the unlicensed kindergartens are located at where the urban and village housing estates meet; they are low in scale, as evidenced by even less than 10 students in a school. 　

 Those schools pose potential risks to children. Some are not equipped with fire-fighting facilities and some are operating in houses built illegally. In addition, educational facilities and teachers in some schools are inadequate.

He also said that the authority encourages all walks of life to participate in education. The illegal schools have to take adjustment efforts during the summer holiday and meet all the operation conditions to get official certificates if they are to continue their enrollment.

By Xu Xinlei