Russia: number of school starters down 25% in two years
In Russia, the number of school starters has gone down by 25% in the last two years
01.09.2025
Article published on the moscowtimes.ru website
In September, around 1.5 million new starters will take their seats in classrooms across Russia. In total, 18 million pupils will be starting/returning to school, according to a Russian Government report, which summarises the outcomes of the 2024-2025 school year, and sets out its plans for the coming year.
Last year, schools welcomed an estimated 1.8 million school starters, compared to around two million in 2023. Within just two years, the number of children starting school declined by 25%.
This dramatic fall is directly related to the country’s acute demographic crisis. According to Rosstat data, in May this year, the total birth rate in Russia had decreased to 1.376 children per mother, the lowest since 2006. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the birth rate was at 1.73 and by 1999 had fallen to 1.16, then rising for a time before reaching a maximum of 1.76 in 2015. The latest decline began shortly after the annexation of Crimea and pre-war in 2021, the rate had sunk to 1.47, having fallen over the decade by 22%.
A birth rate of 2.1 is the minimum required to keep the population stable, although according to estimates from researchers at the Shizuoka University in Japan, this figure could be more like 2.7 after taking social and biological factors into consideration.
Last year, there were just 1.222 million births in Russia – the lowest number since 1999. This represents a 3.4% decline compared to 2023, a trend that continued during the first quarter of 2025 when only 288,800 children were born (4% lower than in the same period of the previous year). According to the demographer Aleksey Rakshi, this is the lowest number since the 18th-19th centuries’’.
