China Taiwan Network reported on April 13th. According to Taiwan's United Daily News, due to the impact of less birth, the number and scale of primary and secondary schools in Taiwan have decreased year by year. There were more than 11,000 primary school students in Taipei Laosong Primary School in the early days, which was once the most crowded primary school in the world, and now there are only 500 people left; New Taipei City Xiulang Primary School students once had more than 12,000, and now there are 1/4 left.
Statistics from the Taiwan education department has been reported that due to the impact of less birth, some primary schools have been consolidated. The number of primary schools in Taiwan has been reduced from 2,661 at the peak of the 2010 academic year to 2,630 at the 2016 academic year, with a decrease of 31 schools within 6 years; primary schools with less than 100 students accounted for the largest number of primary schools in the 2016 academic year, an increase of 14.6 percentage points from 10 years ago.
Junior high schools were less affected by the reduction of births. In the 2016 academic year, 735 schools were only reduced by 7 from the peak five years ago; junior high schools with a student population of less than 300 accounted for the largest number of students, which was 7.8 percentage points higher than 10 years ago.
Xiulang Primary School, founded in 1976, had as many as 12,470 students in 1985, setting the Guinness World Record for the largest number of students, and now only 1/4 of them are left. Principal Chen Qiuyue analyzed that the school district has gradually aging, and with the reduction of births, the number of students has dropped sharply, but it has stabilized, and only one class was reduced last year. (China Taiwan Network Gao Xu)
