Transformation of Settlement Pattern and the Network of Schools in the Rural Areas of the Republic of Tatarstan

— The period of 1970–2019 was characterized by a 1.7-fold decrease in the rural population and a 1.9-fold increase in the urban population of the Republic of Tatarstan. The depopulation processes of the rural periphery led to transformation of settlement system via changes in the structure of the network of rural settlements (RS). The main trends are reduction in the total number of RS and fast polarization, i.e., an increase in the relative share and absolute number of the smallest RS. This is largely due to population loss by small and medium-sized RS. There was an RS transition process from one category in terms of numbers to another, lower in rank. At this stage, only the number of large villages with a population of more than 1000 people is stable. Since the beginning of the 2000s, in Russia, the Program for Optimizing the Network of Educational Institutions began to be implemented. In rural areas of the Republic of Tatarstan, the most intensive restructuring of the school network has been carried out since 2008, and by 2015, the number of schools was approximately 46% that in the 2001/2002 academic year. After 2015, there has been a significant slowdown in the network optimization process, with only a slight negative trend. When making a decision on the reorganization or liquidation of an educational organization, the established dominant factor—the student enrollment level—provides a rationale for predicting the long-term course of transformation of the school network. If we take the enrollment rates of rural schools as conditional criteria, then at the present stage, more than half of educational organizations do not enroll the required number of students.