As China's birth rate continues to decline, the kindergarten industry is experiencing rapid contraction and structural adjustment.
Recently, the Hunan Provincial Department of Education officially issued a document calling for the orderly closure and merger of some kindergartens. This is the first initiative at the provincial level to proactively reduce the number of kindergartens.
In fact, there has been an oversupply of kindergartens in China for a long time.
According to statistics, in 2022, the number of kindergartens in the country decreased by 5,610 compared with the previous year, a decrease of 2%;
The number of children in kindergarten has also shown negative growth since 2021, with a decrease of 130,000 in 2021 and 1.78 million in 2022, dozens of times that of the previous year.
To a certain extent, the shrinkage of kindergartens caused by the decline in the birth rate can be regarded as an active adjustment of the market mode.
However, the pace of adjustment is much faster than one might think.
Just a few years ago, kindergartens in many places were overcrowded, and there were scenes of parents queuing up all night.
Almost overnight, however, the situation was reversed, and in many places there was a "hard to find a child" situation, with plenty of places still available but not enough students.
Therefore, ** has to accelerate the elimination of some serious excess kindergarten resources through administrative means.
In fact, the mass closure of kindergartens is just the beginning.
Affected by future demographic changes and declining birth rates, education at all levels from primary school to university will face varying degrees of impact.
Taking universities as an example, the annual enrollment in China has stabilized at about 10 million, and the number of newborns in 2022 has dropped to 9.56 million, and if it continues to decline to the expected 7 million to 8 million, it means that every new student will theoretically have a school to attend in the future.
This is bound to bring huge pressure on colleges and universities to survive.
Unless new market space is opened up by adjusting professional settings, transformation and upgrading, colleges and universities will not escape the pressure of declining birth rates.
Japan and South Korea have been ahead of us in terms of population decline, and Japan and South Korea have long seen a large number of universities close because they have no students, and this scene is not far from today's China.
Readers can see this moment.
Similar to the higher education sector, the kindergarten industry is under pressure to transform itself.
In the future, there may be only a few kindergartens with distinctive characteristics and excellent reputation that can maintain a stable source of students.
But in any case, the general environment is established, and the trend of large-scale closure of kindergartens will not change in the foreseeable future.
But there are some good aspects of population decline, such as with the decrease in students, the problem of insufficient educational resources will be significantly alleviated, and the era when everyone will have a university may come, which is a huge burden on students and parents.
However, the decline in population is a huge challenge to China's economy, we have completed the road of developed countries for 200 years in just 40 years, and the whole society has undergone earth-shaking changes, the most important reason for which is cheap labor, which is what we call the demographic dividend.
But everything is one and two-sided, people will get old, when they are young, it is a demographic dividend, and when they are old, it is a huge aging crisis.
If we can't find new impetus for development, what was once a dividend will become a huge burden.