MIAOLI (TVBS News) — While many students often look forward to reuniting with their classmates after spending summers apart, some are looking at a lonelier back-to-school day as they find themselves the sole student in their class.
Due to Taiwan's declining birth rate, the enrollment rate among elementary schools has drastically decreased.
As students return to school on Wednesday (Aug. 30) in Taiwan, two first-graders enrolled in Miaoli County's Chiau Wen Elementary School and Yunlin County's Heping Elementary School, respectively, found themself the sole student of their class as they entered the start of the school year.
Chiau Wen Elementary School saw just 14 students from grades 1 to 6, while educators from Heping Elementary School reported merely 28 students.
Since its establishment 62 years ago, Heping Elementary School has maintained just one class per grade, but in the past, each class had about 40 to 50 students.
The principal explained that this year, eight schools in Yunlin reported having just one new student enrolled.
Many in the education field have thus decided to either merge classes of different grades or merge schools so that students could have peers to interact with and enough faculty members to teach them.
