Lego Education has no current relationship with three Shanghai Lego Education centers that abruptly closed Monday, Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper reported Tuesday.

In recent years, Lego Education courses aimed at inspiring creativity and imagination in children have become popular among Chinese parents. Around 400 parents paying an estimated 4 million yuan ($570,000) to enroll their children at the three Shanghai Lego centers have reportedly been affected by the closures.

High demand for the extracurricular building-themed courses has led to the emergence of copycats — training centers providing Lego-based classes without authorization. In this case, however, the three centers were previously licensed by Lego Education, though the cooperation was terminated in early 2019.

Lego Education told The Paper it had allowed the three Shanghai centers to continue offering Lego courses until July 2020. “We haven’t asked for any fees for their use of Lego’s intellectual property rights in the year 2019,” the company said. In a joint announcement Monday, the centers said they had been unable to find a new brand with which to partner.

The three shuttered centers are the most recent casualties in a wave of training center closures since a nationwide campaign to clean up illegal and substandard practices in China’s extracurricular education sector was launched last year. (Image: Tuchong)