BEIJING, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- As the new fall semester begins, some primary school teachers in China are being reassigned to middle schools, following their students as they move up the educational ladder.
This innovative staffing measure is currently being piloted in Shanghai and several other locations in provinces such as Fujian, Anhui, Hubei, and Jiangxi.
The move comes as the country's education system adjusts to a demographic shift that is reshaping demand for teachers: primary schools are seeing declining enrollment and a surplus of teachers, while secondary schools are facing growing teacher shortages.
According to the Ministry of Education, China is experiencing a "wave-like" shift in its school-age population. Primary school enrollment peaked in 2023, middle school enrollment is expected to peak in 2026, and high school enrollment in 2029.
It noted a serious mismatch between faculty supply and demand across different educational stages, adding that the challenge also presents a historic opportunity to proactively adjust and optimize the country's basic education.
China is home to the world's largest basic education system, with around 430,000 primary and secondary schools and kindergartens serving 220 million students.
In March, Education Minister Huai Jinpeng said China's basic education coverage and key indicators had surpassed the average levels of upper-middle-income countries, with preschool and compulsory education reaching the averages of high-income countries.
In China, the enrollment rate of children in preschool programs reached 92.9 percent in 2025, and the net enrollment rates for primary and secondary schools have remained around 100 percent for years, official statistics showed.
China's two performance indicators surpassed those of high-income countries. In 2025, the enrollment rate of school-age children living with disabilities at the nine-year compulsory education stage stayed above 97 percent, and that of girls above 99 percent.
"Transferring primary school teachers to secondary classrooms can optimize the allocation of teaching resources within the education system," said Ding Changfa, an associate professor of economics at Xiamen University.
But moving teachers from lower grades to higher grades is not simply about shifting the numbers around. It also raises the question of how to improve the quality of the teaching workforce, according to Li Tingzhou, a researcher at Shanghai Normal University.
"China's teaching workforce has reached a critical juncture," Li said. "The question used to be whether we had 'enough teachers.' Now, it is whether we have 'good teachers.'"
Still, some have raised concerns about whether teachers transferred to a higher educational stage are competent enough.
"It depends," said Tang Zhisong, a professor of education at Southwest University. "If a primary school teacher has been trained and has acquired the certificate for teaching at a higher educational stage, they are qualified after further training."
In practice, qualifications, such as a corresponding teaching certificate and experience, are usually specified in recruitment announcements.
In July, Longyan City in Fujian Province and Tianchang in Anhui Province issued recruitment notices for qualified primary school teachers to take up middle school positions, with the required teaching certificates and experience clearly specified.
Shanghai's Jing'an district took the move a step further: after selecting 10 kindergarten teachers and 27 primary ones for new positions at a higher learning level, local education authorities in June launched a special one-year-long training program to prepare them for their new roles.
"With the lectures, seminars and practice teaching provided by the program, I could quickly move from the role of a primary school teacher to that of a middle school teacher," said Xie Nan, a participant in the Shanghai training program.
Apart from training, a performance evaluation system should be in place, said Tang Zhisong.
The reallocation of educational resources is not limited to teachers. As the number of school-age children declines, some localities are also finding new uses for idle school buildings, giving them a new lease on life while saving fiscal expenditure.
Take Nanping in Fujian Province as an example. The city had logged 601 idle school buildings as of the fall semester in 2025. Currently, 20 of them have been refurbished into nursing homes, welfare centers or canteens, while 17 have been converted into factories, including facilities processing local specialty tea, and four into cultural tourism sites.
In Yongren County in southwest China's Yunnan Province, 100 out of 118 idle school buildings have taken a new lease of life, saving 91.6 million yuan (about 13.5 million U.S. dollars) in fiscal expenditure. ■
