• From a “one-to-one-one-to-one-day” cradle to a discontent, “fetching”

• Enrolment in primary schools from 2023 to 2028 will also be decreasing

In the spring of this year, there were 15 public kindergartens that issued a gallery announcement and a redundancy of over 300. Several urban kindergartens, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Jubilee, are “intake difficulties”. In recent years, the number of births throughout the country has continued to decline, with the impact of the pre-school stage in some cities.

However, schools at the primary and secondary levels are still overcrowded. Since this year, cities such as Shanghai, Hiroshima, Sud-Kisang and Jenan have successively issued over-extensions in the fall of 2023 primary and secondary schools; and the folding of the “hosting” effect of urban quality education resources, with “urban crowding, weak, village” in some places.

How does education respond to demographic trends after China enters the age of negative population growth? How can Governments respond to the need for quality education and plan for decades of education resource allocation based on changing trends in school-age populations?

Complex situations pose serious challenges to the educational layout structure, resource allocation adjustments and rural education revitalization. Various visitors suggested strengthening precision and scientific planning, optimizing the allocation of educational resources, increasing flexibility in the provision of degree, regulating the size of teacher development and better responding to fluctuations in the school-age population.

Second consecutive year

In recent years, the number of births in my country has continued to decline after a short return, from 18.67 million in the peak of 2016 to 956 million in 2022, with a negative population growth. The impact of demographic changes on the demand for educational resources at different stages is becoming apparent.

It is known that in 2022, 192,000 people were born in the city, with a natural population growth rate of 2.11 per 1,000 inhabitants, a decline of 7.87 per cent in the birth population and a first drop in the birth population since 1997.

“The negative growth in the population will result in a bashing of kindergartens, with more impact on private kindergartens.” The Dean of the Pre-school School of Secondary Teacher Education at the École II School of Secondary Education at Kisangani, Jong, said that in the last two years, the number of kindergarten enrolments in the districts had declined.

Data from the Ministry of Education show that in 2022 the number of children in horticulture and primary school drops nationwide. In 2022, there were 46.2755 million children in pre-school education nationwide and 107 million in primary schools, down by some 17.7 million and 1 million, respectively, from the previous year. This has been the second consecutive year of decline in the number of children in horticulture, with the first drop in primary school enrolment since 2014. According to national birth data for the period from 2017 to 2022, the birth rate for six years was more than 40 per cent, implying that enrolment in primary schools would also decline between 2023 and 2028.

As an example of mega-cities such as the above Sea, the inflow of population and the pool of resources for quality education, the relevant experts of the Shanghai Social Sciences Institute have indicated that, between 2021 and 2035, the population of school age in the compulsory education phase in Shanghai will experience a slow, long-term, gradual decline, with a peak of 2024 in primary schools and a peak of 2028 in secondary schools. Since then, if there has been no significant change in the policy of local drop-outs and the policy of higher examination among the foreign permanent population, the scale of primary high school enrolment will decline.

As a result, there has been a downward trend in the demand for full-time teachers in our compulsory education phase. The experts interviewed predict that by 2035 more than 1 million primary schoolteachers may be overrun by 2035, in accordance with the existing student-teacher ratio.

Some schools are still saturated or even overloaded.

Although primary school enrolment has declined for the first time since 2014, some urban schools are still saturated and even overloaded owing to the urban concentration of high-quality employment and quality education resources to attract the population to accelerate mobility to cities.

The cities of Shanghai, Hiroshima, Sud-Kivu and Sunnan have been followed by over-expression of 2023 years in primary and secondary schools, with 90 schools and schools in nine districts in Shanghai offering “red lights”, and 100 schools in the eight districts of Hiroshima are facing a degree of tension.

In order to alleviate the shortage of degrees, additional construction plans have been announced. In 2023, the city of Beijing will clearly continue to have more than 20,000 new primary and secondary school degrees; in the city of Tianjin and in the city of Vhan there will be 30,000 additional degrees; in the city of Google, 59,000 new primary and secondary schools and kindergartens will be established; and in the city of Nanchang more than 70,000 additional degrees are proposed.

In 2021, we were accompanied by 1.3741 million children of urban workers who were enrolled in compulsory education. Lee Myong Minh, Director of the Department of Education Science and Technology in the Kanton of Jiangxi Province, said that “80 years later” rural parents preferred to bring their children together, preferring more money to send their children to school.

Lack of resources for quality education has led some schools to raise the entry threshold or no longer arrange for the enrolment of their children. In Shanghai, the number of out-of-school enrolments in some primary schools increased from one year to two years or three years; six early-warning schools in Zonta County have been no longer scheduled in the field since 2023 to enrol their children.

According to the Shanghai City Education Community, in response to the current peak in school enrolment, the Shanghai Sea has increased its degree through re-engineering, new schools, but several years later may be overly advanced. Changes in the school-age population pose difficulties in educational planning and resource allocation. Fourteen fifths and a longer period in the future will continue to experience low growth in the Shanghai population, characterized by high mobility and spatial fragmentation within the region, with more structural problems in the allocation of educational resources.

Growing momentum in rural schools

The number of primary school students in a central town has dropped from nearly 4,000 at the peak to more than 900 at present, and the number of people in grades 6 to 1 has declined by grade, followed by 222, 186, 165, 140, 146 and 122. There are only 99 pre-schools. The head of the school described 16 village-level teaching points in the schools and 2 in autumn 2022. There is a strong willingness on the part of rural students to re-enter the school, a general problem facing local rural schools.

According to an analysis of the population, the urban quality education resource “hosting” compared to the negative population growth factor.