China is planning to expand high school and university places while reducing class sizes in kindergartens and schools for younger students, as changing demographics fuelled by falling birth rates drive a shift in resources across its education system. The plans were set out by a senior official at a news conference on Tuesday.
Huang Weiru, deputy director of the social development department at the National Development and Reform Commission, said the education system faced a dual challenge: fewer young children are starting school even as larger cohorts of students enter senior high school and university. "During the 15th five-year period, supply-demand tensions in senior high schools and higher education will intensify," she said, referring to the 2026-2030 economic planning cycle.
The numbers behind the shift are stark. Between 2021 and 2025, enrolment in kindergartens, primary schools and junior high schools fell by nearly 17 million students. China recorded just 7.92 million births in 2025, down 17 per cent from 2024, less than half the level of about a decade earlier and the lowest figure since records began in 1949. The country's total population has declined since 2022, shrinking for a fourth consecutive year to 1.405 billion, and the national birth rate fell to a record low of 5.63 per 1,000 people, well below a death rate of 8.04 per 1,000.
To accommodate the expected increase in demand at the top of the system, the authorities plan to create more high-school places by building new facilities, renovating existing ones and making better use of available ones, Ms Huang said, adding that university enrolments would also be expanded, especially at top universities. Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the number of students entering high school was not expected to peak until around 2029, while university entrants were projected to peak around 2032.
For schools serving younger students, the challenge is the reverse: how to make use of excess resources as student numbers drop. The authorities would encourage smaller class sizes and convert unused buildings into spaces for labour education, arts and other activities, aiming to improve quality rather than simply cut resources, Ms Huang said.
The repurposing is already under way. Primary school admissions fell about 10 per cent in 2025, and the total number of educational institutions nationwide declined by more than 6 per cent to 440,700. Across the country, local communities are converting empty classrooms into elderly care centres, nursing homes and community dining halls. Xiji county in the northwestern Ningxia Hui autonomous region, for instance, plans to transform 65 idle school buildings into rural elderly care service facilities in five years.
The demographic shift is also reshaping the age structure of the country. People aged 60 and above numbered 323.4 million at the end of 2025, or 23 per cent of the population. China's leadership has repeatedly described "high-quality population development" as essential to sustainable growth, and the education reforms are framed as part of that broader push.
The assessment comes as China frames education reform as part of a wider effort to support high-quality economic growth with a shrinking population. The recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan, adopted in October, called for improving the mechanism for allocating educational resources in line with demographic changes.
For China's schools, the coming years will bring a strange combination: fuller lecture halls at the top of the system and emptier classrooms at the bottom. How the country manages that transition — expanding where demand is growing and finding new uses for the buildings and teachers left behind — will shape the education of a generation.
