SCHOOL BOAT: Children in Maoshe Village in Wuning County, Jiangxi Province, board a boat to school on May 17, 2012 (ZHOU KE)

In the past decade or so, the number of students registered in rural primary schools decreased by more than 31.5 million, or 37.8 percent, according to the CERI report. The number of middle schools plummeted by 16.4 million, or 27 percent.

"Some of them have shifted to township or county schools but many of them simply dropped out," said Yang Dongping, Director of the CERI.

According to Han Qinglin, Chairman of the Association of Rural Education under the Chinese Society of Education, the dropout rate of rural primary school students rose to 8.8 out of 1,000 in 2011, almost the same level as in 1997.

"The continuous merging of rural primary schools has resulted in not only the dropout of lower grade students, but even worse, a great deal of students cannot enter school," said Han. "It is possible that the illiterate population may swell by more than 1 million every year."

Experts say schools closed at a faster rate than the declining population of rural children. Liu Shanhuai, a researcher with the Rural Education Institute of Northeast Normal University, said that the cumulative decline in the number of rural children was around 3-4 percent from 2001 to now, whereas the rate of school closures stood above 6 percent.

The fact is that the closed schools were mainly located in small villages, where inconvenient transportation had a large impact on attendance.

"It is too hard for young students to walk a long way to a school and they are not capable of handling the dangers on the road either," Liu said. "So once the nearby schools are closed, and there is no transportation or chance of accommodation at a distant school, their parents prefer to let them drop out."

The NAO found that rural middle schools have to serve areas more than 8 km from their gates on average, compared with over 4 km for primary schools. But in China's western regions, the average serving radius of middle schools exceeds 14 km and for primary school it's 6 km.

Lasting impacts

The authorities have realized the shortcomings of blindly closing or merging rural schools. At a press conference on February 26, Du Kewei, an official on elementary education from the Ministry of Education (MOE), said that school mergers have stopped in many places, including the provinces of Henan, Anhui and Jiangxi, as well as Xinjiang Uygur and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions.

According to the MOE, local governments should work out feasible plans for the locations of their primary and middle schools in accordance with local conditions. Plans must be submitted to the Central Government department in charge of educational system reform before June. No closures or mergers are allowed until a new plan comes out, the MOE said.

Last September, the State Council, China's cabinet, called on local governments to reopen closed schools or learning centers if necessary. "It is a positive signal and shows the government's determination to solve emerging problems," said Yuan Guilin, a professor of rural education at Beijing Normal University.