Something very important to note, Elan is a subsidiary of BGY, the same real estate developing company that owns our all time favorite and well known crap school, Guangdong Country Garden.

They even opened a center in Shunde in the very same cancer-village (seriously, there is an abnormally high percentage of laowai living there who get cancer, but this isn't the topic) community where said school is located, and mostly feed off students from the school who are 'encouraged' to join the center after school but truly don't have any choice if they want to get higher marks.

Most likely, their other centers are also located near BGY owned schools that they feed off from, good business strategy I will give them that, two bird but one stone, milk the parents twice for the same stuff.

What you get are unwilling students who at least are too exhausted from their 12h school day to screw around.

Keep on mind that all the management or centers principals are promoted sales people from the parent real estate company BGY. They are clueless in any and all things related to education (even though they love to pretend otherwise even in the face of a certified teacher with 20+ years of experience) and as far as management goes are some of the most incompetent people I have ever had the displeasure to work with. But at least they are good sales, which is probably the reason they got promoted in the first place.

And they are definitely not allowed to hire Foreigners, they use third-party agents to sponsor the visa for them, which leads to a great many problems related to legal status down the road for the teacher, as you already pointed out.

In sum a crap branch of a crap company, to be avoided at any cost.