Signs of declining birth rate in China and its consequences on the society are no more as glaring as the country’s kindergartens and preschools, once the most sought-after places for parents for their wards’ early education. Today, they are struggling for existence as due to demographic challenges, they are closing down operations. Shutters were pulled down on 5,610 kindergarten and preschools in China in 2022, marking a major fall in children’s schools for the first time since 2008, an annual report published by China’s Ministry of Education on July 5 said. It has a link with students’ enrolments in schools.
As per the report, the number of students enrolled in kindergarten and preschools dropped by 3.7% from a year earlier to 46.3 million in 2022. China’s kindergarten and preschools had witnessed 48 million enrolments in 2021, the Ministry of Education said. Yet no less alarming is the fact that the number of primary schools in the country has also declined in China. According to the Ministry of Education, primary schools’ number fell by 3.35% to 149,100 at the end of 2022, while new enrolments shrank by 4.55% to 17 million. Meanwhile, China Daily said since 2013, for the first time, primary schools saw students’ numbers dropping by around 1 million to 107 million across the country in 2022. It will further decline in the coming years.
Quoting a study by Beijing Normal University, China Daily said the number of primary and middle school students in 2035 is expected to drop by around 30 million from that in 2020. Declining birthrate in China is cited as the main reason for the drastic drop in enrolments in schools and subsequent putting down of shutters on kindergartens and primary schools in the country. A country of more than 1.40 billion population, China saw the birth of just 9.56 million babies last year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. This represented the lowest total birth in China’s modern history, especially since 1961 after the country ended its one child policy in 2016. Birth rate in the country fell to 6.77 births per 1,000 people in 2022, the lowest on record from 7.52 in 2021.
With this, the overall population fell by 850,000 to 1.4118 billion, as deaths outnumbered births for the first time in six decades. Media reports suggest that among 21 Chinese provinces and municipalities that have disclosed demographic data for 2022, 13 provinces have reported more deaths than births. Provinces like Beijing, Henan, Shandong, Gansu, and Anhui provinces witnessed their population decline for the first time. In the midst of such developments, experts have warned that more kindergartens, preschools, and primary schools in China will close in coming years as the country is likely to witness further decline in birth rate and its impact on school enrolments. Since the 1990s, China’s fertility rate has declined to below the replacement level of 2.1. It was 1.30 in 2020 and 1.15 in 2021. In view of declining birth rate and its impact on economy and overall interest of the society, China introduced a three-child policy in 2021. To make it successful, Beijing announced incentives such as tax breaks, subsidies for childcare and longer parental leave.
Yet these measures have fallen flat like house of cards. On account of changing lifestyles and high costs of living in urban areas, couples are reluctant to have babies in China, said a report by South China Morning Post. Moreover, a new trend has caught Chinese youths in its grip as a significant number of them want to stay single and refuse to raise families. A CNN report quoting China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs said that just 6.8 million couples registered marriages in 2022, down 10.5% from 2021 when 7.63 million marriage registrations were made. Given the situation, experts say it is hard to expect a return of normal rise in enrolments in kindergarten or nursery schools in China. Rather a sharp drop in preschools and primary schools has triggered a concern that kindergarten teachers might join the growing list of jobless people
in the country.
Unemployment has already reached 20.8% in China with youth between 16 and 24 years old being major sufferers. Chinese authorities are planning to repurpose physical facilities like campuses and classrooms of closed kindergarten, preschools and primary schools into elderly caregiving facilities and make jobless teachers work as caregivers for the elderly, said a report by South China Morning Post. But the question is: Will kindergarten or elementary school teachers easily transition into caregivers for the elderly? Questions are raised that if trained elementary school teachers will be used for elderly peoples’ caregiving then what is the purpose of the government’s move to strengthen the education system in China? According to China Daily, the Central government last year allocated 30 billion yuan ($4.36 billion) to improve the weak links in the teaching facilities of primary and middle school students, particularly in central and western regions of the country.