SINGAPORE: When Out of Box Academy suddenly announced in December that it would be closing down its student care centres, parents told Shin Min Daily News they were worried that they would not be able to get back the tuition and deposits they had paid in advance.
Apparently, they are not the only ones. As it turns out, the student care centres’ foreign investors have also come forward, saying they have reason to worry they will not get their investments back.
A mother whose child was enrolled at one of the centres told the Chinese daily that it had been mentioned in a parents’ group in December that Out of Box Academy, which operated 33 student care centres across Singapore, might close. At the time, she did not give it much thought, since she had also heard another institution would take over the business, which meant her child would continue to attend sessions.
However, Out of Box Academy issued a statement on December 11, announcing that its centres would cease operations the following day and apologising for the suddenness of the decision.
This left parents and students in the lurch, and the mother who had spoken to Shin Min Daily News filed a police report. When journalists from the Chinese daily visited the Out of Box Academy at 733 Bukit Timah Road, it was locked.
A headache for foreign investors
On Jan 22 (Thursday), Shin Min Daily News provided an update to the story, saying that the closure of the student centres hasn’t just been a problem for parents and students but also for the people who put up money for the centres in the first place.
The report said that more than ten such investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and mainland China have come to Singapore to complain. It added that these investors have not made money from their investments in the past two years, and are afraid they will lose the “millions of yuan” they put into Out of Box Academy.
A 32-year-old investor named Ms Liu, who works in the finance industry, said she learned about the student centres from another friend, who had invested in Out of Box Academy.
Early in 2023, she and other investors visited the centre’s sites in Singapore, specifically in the Bukit Timah area. By July of that year, she signed a contract and became a franchisee at an Out of Box Academy student centre in Marine Parade.
She and other franchisees who spoke to the Chinese daily said they believed it was a good investment at the time, thinking they could get their money back within two years.
They did not play an active role in running the centres, which was the responsibility of the management centre, which did not always answer their questions when they were asked.
The report says that over a dozen investors came together to Singapore late last year and filed a police report, which the Singapore Police Force has acknowledged. /TISG
Read also: Takeaway from Wan Yang closure: Some say they’ll never get prepaid packages
