CHINA

Charts of the Day: China’s Demographic Shift Reshapes Education

Published: Nov. 12, 2026 5:36 p.m. GMT+8

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China’s preschool and primary school enrollments shrank by millions in 2025 while secondary schools continued to swell, laying bare a demographic time lag that is forcing a massive reallocation of educational resources across the country.

According to the China Statistical Yearbook 2026 recently published by the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of children in preschools dropped by 3.58 million year-on-year to 32.25 million in 2025 — a decline of about 10%. Primary school enrollments fell by roughly 4.06 million, or 3.8%.

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What Happened When

2020 to 2025：: Preschool enrollments dropped by roughly one-third; senior high school students surged by 21.9%, with a 22.7% increase in teachers; primary school enrollments declined, but primary teachers remained slightly higher than in 2020. The gross enrollment rate for preschools rose from 85.2% to 92.9%.

Between 2020 and 2025：: Urban primary school students increased by 20.8%, with teacher counts rising by 25.4%; urban junior high school students increased by 33.3%, while teachers grew by 28.3%. The student-to-teacher ratio in urban primary schools dropped from 18.28 to 17.61; urban junior high schools saw their ratio rise from 13.04 to 13.55. In 23 of 31 provincial-level regions, urban junior high school student-to-teacher ratios climbed.

Over the past five years (2020-2025)：: Rural primary school student numbers plunged by 42.0%, and teaching staff decreased by 31.7%; in Heilongjiang, rural primary students plummeted by 62.2%, reducing the student-to-teacher ratio from 6.09 to 4.21; in Guangdong, the student drop was 20.1%, edging the ratio down from 15.31 to 14.36.

Between 2020 and 2025：: Full-time teachers in private preschools dropped by 36.5%; private primary and junior high schools lost 31.8% and 17.1% of their teachers; private senior high school teachers surged by 73.9%, climbing from roughly 266,000 to 462,500.

From the 2023 to 2025 academic years (in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area)：: Kindergarten enrollments fell from roughly 120,400 to 106,600; junior high school enrollments swelled by 15.9% to 154,700.

Between 2024 and 2025：: The number of regular primary schools nationwide fell from 136,300 to 128,300, a loss of about 8,000 schools in a single year; nine-year consolidated schools increased from 18,478 to 18,788.

2025：: Preschool enrollments dropped by 3.58 million year-on-year to 32.25 million, a decline of about 10%; primary school enrollments fell by roughly 4.06 million, or 3.8%. Junior and senior high school student populations grew by approximately 1.23 million and 1.17 million, respectively.

2025：: The number of full-time preschool and primary school teachers fell by 7.7% and 2.0% from the previous year, whereas junior and senior high school teaching staff grew by 2.2% and 3.0%.

In 2025：: Primary school enrollments in Beijing ticked up by 0.2%, while junior high school numbers jumped by 10.5%; Heilongjiang saw primary and junior high school students dropping by 7.0% and 4.0%, respectively; Guangdong primary school enrollments fell by 2.4% even as junior high school enrollments grew by 5.3%.

In 2025：: The total number of students in private senior high schools reached 6.01 million, a 2.1% year-on-year increase; new enrollments fell for the first time in six years, with only 2.04 million new students admitted, dropping by 82,300, or 3.9%, even as national aggregate high school enrollments grew by 3.7%.

In September 2025：: Six state departments launched the “Action Plan for the Revitalization of County-Level Senior High Schools.”

During the Guangzhou municipal legislative sessions in January 2026：: Hu Guosheng noted that the city’s private high schools fulfilled only 60.4% of their enrollment quotas in 2025.

In August 2026：: The Liaoning Provincial Department of Education announced that small-scale schools with fewer than 100 students would be guaranteed public funding calculated at a 100-student baseline.

In June 2026：: The State Council incorporated cross-phase resource planning into its 15th Five-Year Plan for Educational Development.

In September 2026：: Pudong’s localized 15th Five-Year Plan for education was issued.

In October 2026：: Wei Yi analyzed the choices of 164 private high school students in a research brief.

AI generated, for reference only

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