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A mass protest by parents this week against the planned closure of a private school in northern China prompted a rare reversal by authorities, officials and parents said.
Video posted on social media showed hundreds of parents outside the Nangong municipal government building in Hebei province on Sunday, demanding Fengyi Elementary School stay open after learning it was set to close its doors.
The planned closure appeared to be part of a broader government effort that began several years ago to scale back private education and boost state-run schools.
In the video, posted on X by Yesterday, a project that documents mass protests in China, the demonstrators could be heard shouting “Disagree!” and “Leaders come out!”
Witnesses told RFA that the protest continued into the night, and police were dispatched to maintain order.
A parent who did not want to be named for safety reasons told Radio Free Asia on Thursday that the school was well-regarded and parents would compete for placements for their children through a public lottery.
With the school’s closure, children were going to be sent instead to public schools with a reputation for chaotic management and high turnover of teachers, he said.
“They (the government) saw that the school had high educational quality and that parents with financial means sent their children to Fengyi Elementary School, so they wanted to close it down,” the parent said.
As well as being told the school would close, parents were told to choose a public school for their children. The video posted on X showed a form for them to fill out to list the priority of their school choices.
But following the protest, authorities reversed course.
An official from the Nangong City government office confirmed a “protest by thousands of parents a few days ago,” but said that “the problem has been resolved” and that “Fengyi Elementary School will not be closed.” The official said he wasn’t able to provide further details and the matter was being addressed by the Education Bureau.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to scale back private education and bring private schools under state control with the justification that it would promote fairness in education and reduce costs for parents. However, it has more recently eased restrictions on private tutoring.
According to statistics released by the Ministry of Education last October, the total number of private schools in the country has decreased by more than 20,000 in the past four years, and by more than 11,000 in 2023 alone. The data also showed that the current number of students enrolled in private schools stood at less than 50 million, down more than 3 million from 2023. In total, that represents nearly 17% of the total student population nationwide.
But private schools remain a first choice for many parents in China even as local governments have implemented policies to restrict the private education and narrow the gap in the quality with education offered in the public sector.
Jia Lingmin, a retired teacher from Zhengzhou, Henan, told RFA that as birth rates in China continue to decline, the number of children entering school is also decreasing year by year, and many public schools are facing the problem of insufficient enrollment and closure.
“Private schools have high education quality and a good teaching environment, and many parents are willing to send their children to private schools,” she said.
Yao Li, a parent in Handan, Hebei, said that although public schools offer free tuition for ages at which education is compulsory – from age 6 to 15 – parents still generally prefer private schools in terms of education, teacher quality and management methods.
The Nangong City Education Bureau Office did not respond to RFA’s call seeking comment.
Additional reporting by Baili Liu. Edited by Mat Pennington
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