He said that the decrease is not significant, "however there's a big gap in different levels of education, resulting from our demographic tendencies," said Šadurskis.
According to the minister, the number of children in preschools has dropped by 1,000 while the number of children in secondary schools has increased over last year.
According to Šadurskis, there are 80 schools where the number of pupils is insufficient.
Some of them could be closed and some reorganized or moved to another level of education - for example, some secondary schools could become primary schools, etc.
The number of schools in Latvia has decreased by 20 this year to 735. Nine of them have been closed and others have been reorganized. About 21,000 children are attending Grade 1 this year and more than 203,000 are currently in schooling.