Beijing will witness a further decrease in primary school enrollment in the fall semester, according to the Beijing Municipal Education Commission.

For the coming semester, the number of new pupils in Beijing has dropped to 70,000, down 10,000 on last year, said the commission.

The city once reported up to nearly 200,000 new students in primary schools, and experts attribute the reduction to a shrinking of the population of child-bearing age.

The number of new pupils in Beijing will continue to decrease until 2010.

The number of primary schools in the city dropped from 2,000 in¡¡2002 to 1,500 last year, due to the diminishing number of students.

Commission officials said the decrease in the primary school population has led to an accumulation of educational resources, which can be used to improve the quality of education in Beijing.

According to statistics, the number of primary schools in China¡¡at the end of 2005 fell by 28,000 from the previous year to 366,200. Primary schools nationwide enrolled 16.7 million students¡¡in 2005, down 752,700 on the previous year.