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expatben · Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:02 pm Post subject: Brighton Idiomes

I am looking for information on a school that was known as Brighton Idiomes that went bust in 2002. Any information would be, by me appriciated.
XPat

foss · Joined: 17 Aug 2004 Posts: 55

One of a batch of schools that hit the wall following the Opening scandal. Was it the outfit in Barcelona where the students saw the closure was coming and so decided to take the law into their own hands by trying to take the PCs away with them?

expatben · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 3:16 pm Post subject:

Sorry to be thick but...what was the opening scandal?

JimRoss · Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 31

English Opening were a chain of English schools that tried to teach English in large store-front type classrooms.

They had loads of PCs for students to do computer based learning. They also had a few English teachers floating around to answer questions.

English Opening charged clients in advance for x hours worth of study. So great was the cost that many of them had to take out bank loans to pay the fees. Under very dubious circumstances English Opening went bankrupt leaving clients with no way to recover the money they'd paid for the tuition.

The clients then tried to sue the mother company but it was unsuccessful as the mother company had set up English Opening as a totally separate legal entity which meant if it failed, then the mother company could not be held accountable.

The clients then tried to sue the banks that they were repaying the loans to and - you guessed it - stonewalled again.

All in all a messy and tragic situation. The effect was that people who were thinking about similar programs and saw what happend with English Opening were put off, so these companies went bust as well.

Another company that went to the wall was called "Blah Blah" (I'm serious) and, from what I understand, Wall Street English has also suffered to the extent that it is closing up it's store-front operations as well.

Jim