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Students expect to win battle but lose war
By Meng Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-24 07:58
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 A training institution touts for students at an educational expo in the captal
last year. A JING / FOR CHINA DAILY |
All of the almost 200 English learners who are taking a Seattle-based language school to court feel confident they will win their case but few are hopeful of getting their hands on the 3 million yuan in tuition they say is owed them.
The former students with Real Life English have been in dispute with the school ever since it ceased operation in October.
Guo Wenze, a 50-year-old former Real Life English student, is the principal claimant in the legal action.
Guo predicts the students will win the suit but be disappointed when it comes to a financial settlement, the first case in China against a defunct English language school.
About 40 English learners reached an out-of-court settlement with the owners of the school after they took the case to the Jiuxianqiao tribunal of Chaoyang district court in late April.
The school's legal representative, Wang Jian, promised the disappointed students who claim they paid in advance for lessons they never received, that he will do his best to return money owed them.
According to Guo, Real Life English also owes money to its former landlords for its three schools: one in Haidian district and two in Chaoyang district.
"Many people are waiting for their compensation," he said. "We have no idea when it will be our turn."
Students believe Anders Johnson, CEO of World Link Education, returned to his home country, Sweden, after the schools' closure.
However, Johnson insisted the collapse of the schools was the result of the spread of H1N1 flu virus and the global financial crisis.
"We didn't run away. There has not been any money leaving China. Instead, I have personally borrowed all I can to send to China to replace what was lost," Johnson said in an email interview with METRO.
"I truly feel for everyone - students, staff - involved but even if it's terrible to go bankrupt it is not illegal. World Link and Real Life is not the first and will not be last, unless the government changes the regulations."
What happened to Real Life English was not an isolated case. In December 2008, Vivid English closed its doors without notice, affecting 200 students in Beijing. And in January last year, Linguaphone, another English training center, which claimed a near 100-year history in English education, closed a dozen of its branch schools all over China.
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"However, most people give up on legal action because they cannot stand the long process and it is so hard to find all the registered students and collect evidence after the schools close," Guo said, adding that he spent half a year collecting enough evidence to proceed with the case.
"It is time to introduce some regulations," said Ji Mingming, vice-president of the Chinese Association for Non-government Association.
Ji said in an earlier report that the Real Life English incident proved that the training industry desperately needed supervision, not just from the government but from non-governmental organizations.
Statistics from the Ministry of Education show the size of the education training market in China will reach 500 billion yuan in the next five to 10 years.
Zhu Wei, the chief editor of Training magazine, said in an earlier report that despite the fact that the industry has existed for more than 10 years, it hasn't been fully developed. Very few of the about 70,000 training organizations in China are able to generate 10 million yuan a year.