School-age Population Falls Below 400,000 Mark, Entering New Territory After 3 Years
The number of children entering elementary school next year is projected to fall below 300,000 for the first time on record. This is because babies born in 2020, who will enter school next year, numbered 272,337, down 10.0% from the previous year. In 2020, births fell to the 200,000 range for the first time since related statistics began in 1970.
The number of new students does not exactly match the number of births, as variables such as deaths, early enrollment, stays abroad, and foreign residents in Korea come into play. However, over the past 20 years, the gap between the two figures averaged 12,438 (2.6%), with new students always being fewer. This suggests the variables' impact is limited.
New enrollments peaked at 1,055,632 in 1968, an all-time high, and have trended downward since the 1980s. They first fell into the 500,000 range in 2008 and into the 400,000 range in 2009, largely staying at that level. This year's elementary school entrants numbered 301,442, the lowest since statistics began in 1964. In 2024, entrants stood at 353,828, marking the first entry into the 300,000 range, and enrollments have declined for four consecutive years since 2023 through this year, with the rate of decrease reaching around 10%.
The seeds of this steep decline lie in the deepening low birth rate of the mid-to-late 2010s. Births in 2017 fell 11.9% from a year earlier to 357,771, dropping into the 300,000 range for the first time. Births were recorded at 238,317 in 2024 and 254,341 last year.
As schools in non-metropolitan areas shrink rapidly, changes in the education environment are emerging, such as limited peer interaction and difficulties running diverse educational programs. The concentration of families with school-age children in the metropolitan area is also continuing.
The government plans to abolish the 55-year-old system of linking local education subsidies to national tax revenues and invest the resulting surplus funds in early childhood, higher, and lifelong education, which have long seen insufficient investment.
