China’s Baby Bust Hits Primary Schools as Enrollment Plunges

1. China's demographic decline is beginning to have a significant impact on its primary education system. Having already caused shrinking kindergarten enrollments over several years, this negative trend is now manifesting sharply in primary schools as well.[para. 1]

2. According to the 2025 Statistical Communiqué on National Economic and Social Development, released by the National Bureau of Statistics, national primary school enrollment dropped to 14.617 million in 2025. This marks an almost 10% fall from the previous year and a total contraction of 22% from the peak year of 2023.[para. 2]

3. The number of births in China continued to fall, reaching just 7.92 million in 2025. Projections suggest that, if this trend continues, annual primary school enrollment could be cut in half over a six-year period. Preschool education has experienced similar hardship; enrollments dropped from 35.84 million in 2024 to 32.255 million in 2025, marking a fifth consecutive year of decline.[para. 3]

4. China’s primary school population peaked in 2023 and has been declining ever since. In 2025, there were 100 million primary school students nationwide. Projections from Peking University’s China Institute for Educational Finance Research suggest that the junior high school-age cohort will fall below 100 million by 2026 and may reach as low as 94.18 million.[para. 4]

5. This drop in student numbers has resulted in an oversupply of both schools and teachers. In 2024, China had 136,300 regular primary schools, 7,200 fewer than the year before, due to closures and consolidations.[para. 5]

6. The migration of rural populations to cities exacerbates these trends, accelerating the loss of rural students and prompting the merger or shutdown of underused rural schools.[para. 6]

7. Surpluses in teaching staff have prompted regional governments to reduce their teaching workforce or transfer primary school teachers to other roles. Experts predict this problem, which now affects lower-grade teachers, will soon expand to upper primary grades, and later, to junior high and high schools.[para. 7]

8. In contrast, junior high and high schools are experiencing an enrollment peak. Junior high enrollment reached 18.528 million in 2025, a slight annual increase, while regular high school enrollment grew by 3.73% to 10.749 million.[para. 8][para. 9]

9. Demographic projections predict the junior high student population will peak in 2026 and the high school population in 2029. The expansion of regular high school places is underway, with 600,000 added in 2024, and provinces like Guangdong planning to add 1 million by 2026.[para. 10]

10. The drive to expand regular high school capacity has reduced the pressure to channel junior high graduates into vocational paths. In 2025, there were 5.265 million enrollments in secondary vocational education, with a regular-to-vocational high school ratio of 2.04:1.[para. 11]

11. Some regions with sufficient capacity are allowing nearly all interested students to attend regular high school. For example, Hubei province aims to keep the proportion of junior high graduates gaining regular high school places above 90% for the next five years.[para. 12]

12. Responding to industry needs and social requirements, authorities have loosened the former emphasis on vocational tracking, updating the Vocational Education Law in 2022 to encourage the coordinated development of vocational and general education. This shift has squeezed secondary vocational schools, pushing some toward closure as enrollments drop.[para. 13][para. 14]

13. The total number of secondary vocational schools dropped by 563 from 2020 to 2025, from 9,865 to 9,302.[para. 15]

14. Despite the decline in lower education levels, higher education continues to expand. Graduate enrollments increased by 5.97% year-on-year to 1.438 million in 2025, while regular and vocational undergraduate/junior college enrollments edged up slightly to 10.708 million.[para. 16]