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Why Are Classrooms Emptying Out in the Capital?

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The Editor

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A week ago now, all schoolchildren across France headed back to school, filled with joy and excitement, naturally! But this year too, in the capital, the picture is clear: children have abandoned their desks. So what explains this phenomenon?

Since 1886, according to the Jules Ferry law, school has been mandatory from ages 6 to 13. Since 1959, this obligation has now been extended to age 16, and since 2019, mandatory education begins at age 3. School is therefore an unavoidable step in the capital as elsewhere, which no one can escape. Yet, school playgrounds across the country are becoming a little emptier each year. So what's going on?


A dizzying decline…

For some years now, it's no secret to anyone that people are having fewer children, to the point where Emmanuel Macron has launched an all-out campaign to repopulate France. So naturally, schools are on the front lines facing this population decline, and the capital

is no exception. If Paris loses residents every year, it's also losing schoolchildren, to such an extent that Paris schools have lost a quarter of their enrollment, that's 30,000 children, over the past ten years. Between 2025 and 2026, Parisian education lost 5,767 students, dropping from 288,312 to 282,545. And the picture is clear: things aren't about to turn around anytime soon, because according to experts, within 10 years, we'll drop below the symbolic threshold of 100,000 enrollments.


… not without consequences

Faced with this drop in enrollment, measures are being taken at the academy level that don't sit well with everyone. In fact, over the past few years we've seen regular job cuts: in the Paris academy, 83 full-time equivalents (FTE) have been eliminated in primary education and funding has been reduced by 120 FTE in secondary education. Similarly, mergers have been implemented between different schools in the capital, as is the case for four schools in the 14th, 16th, and 18th arrondissements.

Yet this decline in the number of students attending school in the capital has, however, a more than positive consequence, according to the Paris academy rector, as well as many parents and students: reducing class sizes, which enables higher-quality and more personalized teaching.