JP Holdings, Japan’s largest childcare facility company, is to invest $5m in a new kindergarten complex in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang.
The school will be opened in three phases between 2017-2019 and will offer a Japanese-style curriculum and Japanese language education to 600 children.
Chairman of JP Holdings, Ogita Kazuhiro, met with local Da Nang representatives last month to announce the venture.
During his visit, Kazuhiro said that JP Holdings has developed 220 projects so far that focus on high quality education. Among these is a joint venture with a local business to run a preschool in Ho Chi Minh City, announced in August, with a similar venture mooted for Hanoi. Meanwhile, Malaysia and Thailand are cited as other potential markets.
Commentators believe that the expansionist plans of JP Holdings stem from the limited projections for Japan’s child-aged population
Commentators believe that the expansionist plans of JP Holdings, who have 165 preschools in Japan and run after-school services, stem from the limited projections for domestic growth because of Japan’s declining child-aged population.
Japanese language has already been taught in Da Nang at some of the city’s junior secondary schools following its foreign language teaching programme policy 2012-2020.
Vice-chairman of the city’s People’s Committee, Dang Viet Dung, said that Da Nang’s 12 current foreign investment projects in education were worth $172m overall.
The single biggest of these is the American University In Vietnam that was launched in August, signalling an investment in the Ngu Hanh Son district of $142.2m, according to website Vietnam+. Meanwhile, in Da Nang’s Lien Chieu district, the American One Sky Foundation [formerly Held the Sky Foundation] have funded a kindergarten project costing $3.5m.
As observers note, more ventures are likely to follow with the growth of the middle class in Vietnam.
