One out of every four new infant school places in Malaga has been left vacant

One in four new infant school places for the next academic year in Malaga will be empty due to a sharp drop in the province’s birth rate.

It reached its lowest figure in decades in 2020 - the year of Covid-19 confinement and the year in which the children who are now about to start infant school were born.

The regional Ministry for Education and Vocational Training received 11,517 applications for three-year-olds entering the Andalusian education system for the first time in the next academic year.

The figure is almost 1,000 fewer applications than those submitted last year, when there were 12,490. It means that schools around Malaga province will have 5,027 vacant spots, resulting in one in four of the places offered for new entrants being left empty.

In 2020, 12,517 babies were born in Malaga, 716 fewer than in 2019, where 13,243 births in the province were registered, according to data from the INE (national statistics institute). Those figures are a far cry from the 19,015 recorded in 2008. The 21st century began with 14,255 births.

In recent years there has been a sharp decline in the number of pupils in the second infant education stage (children aged 3 to 5).

According to the statistics of the Andalusian Ministry of Education, 47,122 pupils were enrolled in the 2017-18 academic year; in the 2018-19 academic year there were 46,627; in the 2019/20 academic year (46,646); in 2020/21 (44,664) and last year (43,781).

A drop has also been recorded in primary education (6 to 12 years): from 107,451 in the 2017-18 academic year, it fell to 102,808 in 2020-21 and rose to 104,220 in 2021-22.