A primary school in Shanghai has attracted national attention after its student body shrank to just 22 this year, highlighting the dramatic impact China’s plunging birth rate is having on the education system.
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Sanqiao Primary School in the Pudong New Area now has more full-time staff than pupils – with 22 children and 23 teachers – despite being located in one of China’s largest cities, according to enrolment data released on the local education authority’s website.
The information was first published in April, but only began trending on Chinese social media platforms this week, sparking discussion on how the country’s demographic decline is affecting schools.
Though Sanqiao is an extreme case, a nationwide decline in births has already caused a wave of preschool closures across China and is now increasingly being felt in the primary education sector.
In 2024, the number of kindergartens in China slumped by more than 20,000 compared with the previous year, with more than 5 million fewer children enrolled, according to official data.
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A staff member from the Pudong district government’s student enrolment and examination centre confirmed the data about the school was accurate.
Every school can only recruit students from their designated catchment areas, and for Sanqiao “the number of age-appropriate children in the actual catchment area is just this many”, she said.