China Slashes the Number of Mostly Rural Schools to 'Meet Urbanization Process'
Xu Zuwei
DATE:  Jul 27 2018
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
China Slashes the Number of Mostly Rural Schools to 'Meet Urbanization Process' China Slashes the Number of Mostly Rural Schools to 'Meet Urbanization Process'

(Yicai Global) July 27 -- China's number of schools providing compulsory education from early years to teenage decreased in the past decade on the central government's decision to rationalize the number of rural educational institutions, while the country's population grew by about 90 million citizens during that time.

The number of primary schools, as well as junior and senior high schools, has declined, the education ministry's released in a report today, adding that the number of all primary schools dropped 56 percent to 167,000 units from 2008 to 2017. The drop can largely be attributed to rural primary schools, the number of which fell 57 percent to 100,000 units from 2009 to 2016. In the meantime, China's population grew about 7 percent to over 1.4 billion last year.

In 2001, the State Council announced a policy shift for "adjusting compulsory school arrangement to meet the urbanization process and fluctuations in the school-age population," which meant axing or merging many of China's rural schools, some of which were close to being deserted after recent years' massive migration boom to big cities.

Only kindergartens have bloomed in the past decade, while almost doubling to 255,000. This also applied to kindergartens' attendance rate, which almost two-folded to 46 million kids. The number of colleges and universities, including vocational and technical colleges, increased modestly by 250 units from 2008 to 2017.

The lack of educational facilities has resulted in a downturn in admissions. The enrollment for secondary vocational schools this year declined for the eighth consecutive year to decrease by 109,100 pupils, while the report did not disclose the full set of figures for comparison.

Editor: Emmi Laine

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Keywords:   Ministry of Education,School,Education,Primary,High School,Secondary Education,Undergraduate,Rural China,Migration