According to the 2015 Primary and Secondary Education Development Survey Report released by China Education Online, the country’s largest education statistics and information website, the number of primary and secondary school students has entered a steep decline as a result in the fall in China's school-age population. At the primary level enrolment of new students began to decline in 1997, dropping from around 25 million to just 16.6 million in 2014, while the total number of enrolled students fell by 32 per cent from 140 million in 1997 down to 94.5 million in 2014. The number of new lower secondary students has similarly fallen by 36 per cent since 2003, while the number of new students at the upper secondary level (including both vocational and academic high school students) is down 16 per cent compared to its 2010 peak.

The report attributed the decline of enrolment of primary and secondary education to China’s falling birth rate. In the 1990s more than 20 million children were born annually, but this has fallen to around 16 million recent years. The lowest number was 15.8 million in 2006, according to the China Population Association.

However, the number of children entering pre-school has grown at an average rate of 4 per cent annually since 2004. The total number of registered children in Chinese kindergartens has reached 41.5 million in 2014.

In Beijing, the local government has announced that the scale of secondary vocational education will be reduced significantly over the next five years, to only 60,000 students. The number of secondary vocational schools in the capital will fall from 116 to 60 by 2020, with the falling student-age population as one of the major drivers for this change.

Analysis:

China's falling youth population is now the dominant trend driving student numbers at the primary and secondary levels. However, at both the higher education and pre-school levels this effect is counteracted by policies to increase student enrolment, with China's target of 40 per cent of students entering higher education (including higher vocational education) by 2020 likely to be significantly exceeded. Nevertheless, China's HE sector is also likely to eventually see a decline in student numbers in line with lower levels of the education system. This will also have an effect on the number of Chinese students heading overseas for higher education, due to both the falling total student-age population and overcapacity in local higher education provision.

These changes are also unevenly divided between different regions, with some provinces still seeing an increase in student numbers while others, such as Beijing, seeing a more substantial decline. Some provinces are already seeing overcapacity at their lower-ranked HE institutions, while at the same time other less developed areas are still experiencing very fast growth.

Although China has relaxed its population control policy in recent years, allowing two children to couples where at least one partner is an only child, this is obviously not likely to have any effect at higher levels of the education system for a number of years.

Sources:
1. http://www.jyb.cn/basc/xw/201509/t20150918_637411.html
2. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/21/c_134645836.htm
3. http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/201509/t20150918_208984.html
4. http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/201509/t20150901_204539.html