China’s population has entered an era of negative growth, and the impact of plummeting birth rates has spread to the education sector.
The Asian giant may have seen a short baby boom in 2015 as many families decided to have a second child after the communist regime’s draconian one-child policy was lifted. However, instead of continuing to rise, birth rates declined after 2017.
As a result, in this school year, there is a larger-than-usual number of 6-7-year-old children enrolling in elementary schools, creating a shortage of school capacity for these kids. Meanwhile, due to the irregular pattern of birth rates, kindergartens are currently struggling to recruit enough students. By 2025, elementary schools will experience the same problem after seeing a spike in enrollments in these two years….