Loud Thinking | The Peak of the Two-Child Policy and Population Influx: How to Prevent a Child from Falling Behind in the "School Seat Race" Fever

Ask AI · Behind the Tension of Urban Degree Shortages, How Does Uneven Distribution of Educational Resources Worsen Supply-Demand Conflicts?

Years ago, economist Lu Ming was invited to give a lecture to officials at various levels in Shenzhen. When a city leader asked him for suggestions regarding Shenzhen, he said, “I suggest you build more high schools.” The official was taken aback: “I wanted to ask for your advice on the economic development of Shenzhen, why are you talking about education?”

Lu Ming had his reasons: Shenzhen has a very young population, attracting a large number of talents. However, they do not just work in Shenzhen; they live there, buy homes, get married, and have children. In ten years, some of them may need to start planning for their children’s education, and at that point, they might find that their children not only struggle to get into good schools, but may not even have a place to attend school!

This round of “degree grabbing” is primarily a predictable population cycle.

Lu Ming’s advice is now becoming a reality: currently, primary and secondary schools in major cities across China are experiencing the most intense competition for school places in nearly a decade.

Recently, cities such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Xi’an, Chongqing, Dongguan, and Changchun issued warnings about degree shortages: there are not enough places in local primary and secondary schools, with gaps exceeding 100% in several districts. This means that for every two eligible students, only one may be able to enroll locally due to insufficient seats in local schools.

To what extent are these cities facing degree shortages? Taking Guangzhou as an example, between 2021 and 2025, the city is expected to add 460,000 new public basic education degrees, exceeding the original plan of 300,000. This year, they plan to add another 50,000, but it is still not enough. All eight districts in the city have issued warnings, with Baiyun District and Zengcheng District each having more than 20 warning schools, and the far-flung Huadu District experiencing this for the first time in history.

Hangzhou is no different. By 2025, the city plans to build or expand 40 primary and secondary schools, adding 68,000 new places, and they are rapidly constructing schools. However, in the next three school years (2026-2028), the number of eligible registered students in certain primary schools in Qiantang District, Binjiang District, Shangcheng District, and Gongshu District will be more than double the normal enrollment plan!

Many people may still be puzzled: wasn’t it said that the birth rate has been declining in recent years and kindergartens are struggling to enroll students? How did it suddenly become difficult to get into school?

This issue is simple yet complex.

It is simple because the age groups for kindergarten and primary/secondary school are inherently different. The difficulty in kindergarten admissions is due to the decline in births after 2020; however, the current competition for primary and secondary school places corresponds to the peak in births that followed the relaxation of the two-child policy starting from New Year’s Day 2016: in 2016, the total number of births reached 17.86 million, the highest since 2000, with 17.23 million in the following year.

This group of children began attending primary school around 2022 and is now gradually moving on to middle school, with plans to enter high school around 2030. As they progress through different stages, corresponding educational spots will become tight. Tian Zuyin, director of the Ministry of Education’s Basic Education Department, vividly referred to this as a “wave,” as this age group of children will gradually surge like a wave peak.

In the 2026 school season, sales of school supplies for primary and secondary students are booming in Beijing malls.

Since the population peak changes year by year, it is almost certain that the current shortage of school places will naturally ease in four to five years when there are fewer children. In other words, the current rush to build schools is insufficient, but once built, they may remain underutilized in just a few years. In light of this situation, what should be done?

The deeper issue is the structural imbalance caused by population mobility.

The number of school-age children is relatively easy to estimate, but the real challenge is that people move. The wave of urbanization has led to a growing number of young people flocking to cities, resulting in overcrowded urban schools while rural schools remain empty and may even close down. While this phenomenon has been observed in the modernization processes of various countries, it has been particularly severe in China.

In my hometown, Chongming Island, in the 1990s, students generally attended school close to their hometowns. At that time, our town’s middle school had six classes in each grade, but now the number of students has decreased by more than half, leading to a merger with the primary school. This is still considered good; in the more remote Haijiao Town, five years ago, the first grade only enrolled eight children!

In contrast to the rural exodus, the population in county towns has tripled, with new middle and primary schools being built one after another in recent years. Everyone knows that urban school education quality is better than that in rural areas, with more comprehensive modern teaching equipment, and how many young teachers are willing to work in rural areas?

The more unevenly educational resources are distributed, the more pronounced this centralization trend becomes. The “elite” schools in central cities are often an open secret. In Yulin, Shaanxi, a model has formed in recent years: fathers continue to work in their hometowns while mothers accompany their children in Xi’an, trying to send their kids to better schools there.

On one side, there is a shortage of places in large cities, while on the other, schools in small places remain largely unused due to a loss of students. This misallocation of resources is not merely caused by peaks and troughs in population growth but is the result of three overlapping waves: first, a massive flow of people; from 2010 to 2020, Hangzhou’s population increased by 37%, Xi’an by 43%, Guangzhou by 47%, and Shenzhen by an astonishing 68%! Second, in recent years, various regions have relaxed residency restrictions in a bid to “attract talent,” allowing children who would have had to return to their hometowns to attend school to now enroll near their parents. Finally, the trend of educational resources concentrating in central cities further leads to student centralization.

Supply-side responses have also brought new challenges.

Ironically, many cities, while trying to solve the shortage of educational resources, have further exacerbated this imbalance. Take Xiamen as an example: between 2010 and 2020, the population surged by 46%, and the influx of young people not only drove up housing prices but also meant their children needed schooling. Xiamen is expanding schools while also recruiting teachers from Quanzhou, Longyan, and Sanming. The result has been a loss of excellent local teachers, widening the educational quality gap between Xiamen and these areas, leading more parents to believe that it is best to send their children to school in Xiamen. This creates a cycle, further tightening the supply of school places in Xiamen.

A similar situation exists in Shenzhen, even more pronounced. If there is a difference, it is that Shenzhen can attract teachers from a wider area, having brought in excellent teachers from Hubei, Huanggang, and Northeast China for many years. From 2021 to 2024, Shenzhen is expected to add as many as 825,000 basic education places, exceeding the total of the previous decade.

The current solutions can be summarized as various methods to “increase supply”: building new schools, expanding old ones, rehiring retired teachers, and increasing the recruitment of non-staff teachers. The issue of school buildings is relatively easier to solve; it just requires timely construction. The real challenge lies in teacher resources: once new schools are built, where will the teachers come from? Improving teaching quality requires long-term adjustment, and teachers are also human beings with limited energy. If a class of 40 students is crammed with 60, teachers will struggle to keep up, inevitably affecting teaching quality.

Moreover, the more critical issue is the morale of the teaching staff: a team led by Qiao Jinchong, an associate professor at Beijing Normal University’s Faculty of Education, predicts that by 2035, there will be an excess of 1.5 million primary school teachers and 370,000 middle school teachers nationwide based on changes in school-age populations. Think about it: if you were a teacher, working at full capacity for the next couple of years, but uncertain about your job security in less than ten years, how would you feel?

After accommodating this wave of children, educational reforms must also be compelled.

The current shortage of school places in major cities appears, on the surface, to be a “wave” caused by a population peak, likely lasting less than ten years. However, on a deeper level, it involves how the entire education system can provide quality public services for every child.

In a sense, the current mismatch in educational resources stems from the rigidity of the education system and the uneven distribution of educational resources: for a long time, China’s basic education has primarily relied on the public education system, depending heavily on the dedication of teachers and non-staff teachers to cope with heavy teaching workloads; meanwhile, the uneven distribution of educational resources has caused people to flock to certain “super schools” in certain areas.

In Japan, there are no such issues. Educational resources are highly balanced, and thus the concept of “school district housing” does not exist. If student numbers increase somewhere, market mechanisms adjust automatically, allowing private schools to emerge in response to this opportunity, alleviating the pressure on local governments to address enrollment difficulties.

Reality shows that the difficulties in admissions across various regions in the country can also be resolved through creative approaches. The Fuweng Township Central Primary School in Chun’an County, Hangzhou, has been widely praised as “the most beautiful rural primary school” since its establishment, with parents even bringing their children from Sichuan and Guangdong to enroll there. According to the vice county head in charge of education, they initially aimed to renovate this remote rural school to provide a good teaching environment for the few local children, but the project unexpectedly gained national attention. This success demonstrates that even rural areas can have excellent educational resources and address the issues of student loss and teacher attraction.

Only a flexible education system can respond to such changes: we cannot focus solely on meeting children’s enrollment needs while neglecting the long-term development of teachers. Cultivating talent for a century is not about having a conveyor belt of workers who can be used immediately. While it is indeed necessary to continuously expand quality educational resources, we must also consider how the education system will adapt after the population peak passes in a few years. It is very likely that within a decade, all regions will implement smaller class sizes, which will not only mean changes in student numbers but also signify a transformation in educational models.

Although the current mismatch in educational resources may bring significant problems in the short term, if viewed from another perspective, isn’t this also a good thing? Because it at least indicates that a large population is flocking to cities in search of better educational opportunities, which is an opportunity rather than a problem for both urbanization and the enhancement of educational quality. The key is not to stop this flow but rather to better meet people’s legitimate needs, which will “force reforms” and drive changes in the education system.

In a modern society, certainly no child should be left behind. However, achieving this requires more than just building a few more classrooms; it necessitates forward-thinking planning, systematic improvements, and creative responses to better understand the needs of parents, students, and teachers. By placing people at the center, we can ensure that every child enjoys quality educational resources, and the current problems we face may ultimately be resolved.

Editor: Ding Yang