BEIJING, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -
- Beijing will witness a further decrease in primary school
enrollment in the fall
semester,
according to the Beijing
Municipal Education
Commission.
For the coming semester, the number of new pupils in
Beijing has dropped to 70,000, down 10,000 on last year,
said the commission.
The city once reported up to nearly 200,000 new
students in primary schools, and experts attribute the
reduction to a shrinking of the population of child-bearing
age.
The number of new pupils in Beijing will continue to
decrease until 2010.
The number of primary schools in the city dropped from
2,000 in 2002 to 1,500 last year, due to the diminishing
number of students.
Commission officials said the decrease in the primary
school population has led to an accumulation of educational
resources, which can be used to improve the quality of
education in Beijing.
According to statistics, the number of primary schools
in China at the end of 2005 fell by 28,000 from the
previous year to 366,200. Primary schools nationwide
enrolled 16.7 million students in 2005, down 752,700 on the
previous year. Enditem.