(Yicai) July 1 -- As China finishes the work of building a high-quality education system over the next five years, the government intends to expand the scope of free schooling and look into extending the duration of compulsory education, according to a new plan. Experts said the plan is the latest addition to a package of measures aimed at supporting families and lifting the nation’s birth rate.

Under the five-year education development plan released by the State Council on June 29, China will promote higher-quality and more inclusive preschool services. Key initiatives include increasing the share of places available in public kindergartens, encouraging enrollment of children aged two to three years, expanding integrated childcare and early-education services, and steadily widening access to free schooling.

The plan also calls for upgrading under-resourced kindergartens, narrowing disparities between urban and rural preschool systems, and bringing the salaries of public kindergarten teachers within the scope of the government's budget.

Free schooling could eventually be expanded to cover the three years of preschool and be extended into high school, Jiang Quanbao, a professor in the School of Labor Economics at Capital University of Economics and Business, told Yicai. The aim is to lower the financial burden of raising and educating kids while strengthening China's broader fertility-support framework, he said, noting that similar initiatives have already been piloted in some fiscally stronger regions.

China's current compulsory education system provides nine years of tuition-free schooling from age six to 15, covering primary school and junior secondary education.

The phased introduction of free preschool education and the gradual expansion of free educational form part of a broader effort to lower the costs associated with childbearing, childrearing, and education, according to Jiang. These measures are also an important part of refining China's policy framework for supporting fertility, he said.

In addition, the development blueprint responds to demographic shifts by calling for a wide-ranging forecasting and early-warning system for school-age population trends. This system would aim to support timely adjustments in educational resource allocation and encourage local governments to promote smaller class sizes based on local conditions.

The decline in the compulsory school-age population has created a valuable "window of opportunity" for smaller classes, Ding Changfa, an associate professor at Xiamen University's School of Economics, told Yicai. Such reforms could improve educational quality while also easing the workload on teachers, he pointed out.

The falling birth rate has already begun to reshape China's education system. The number of elementary school students likely peaked in 2023, while the ranks of junior high school pupils is expected to peak this year, according to a report jointly released by the Ministry of Education and the National Bureau of Statistics last November. The high school and higher education student populations are projected to crest in 2029 and 2032, respectively.

Following the end of China's long-running family planning policy, annual births briefly rebounded to 17.86 million in 2016. The recovery proved short-lived, however, with births subsequently resuming their decline and falling to 7.92 million last year.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev