Demographic trends and their role in assessing the need for resources to form educational and pre-professional trajectories of schoolchildren

The purpose of the study is to create and test a methodology for calculating the schoolage population in the medium and long term. The need to analyze demographic trends is due to the need to assess the resource provision of general education to address the current challenges of educational policy. The information base of the study includes data from the Federal State Statistics Service, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, and the demographic forecast performed at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. To assess the resource availability of high-quality general education, forecast values for the population aged 7 to 17 years for the period 2023–2045 have been taken. To assess the success of a unified model of career guidance implementation, information on the population in age cohorts corresponding to grades 6–11 for the period 2025–2045 has been taken. The results of forecasting demographic trends in Russia as a whole have been presented, while the proposed methodology allows calculations for both individual types of territories and regional general education systems. The analysis of forecast data in the context of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and urban and rural settlements has shown that demographic trends in individual regions differ significantly and do not coincide with national trends. This indicates the priority of timely assessment of resource provision, including possible support from the federal budget.