North Macedonia is heading into the new school year with around 14,500 entry-level pupils enrolled so far, almost 38 per cent fewer than a decade ago, as falling birth rates and emigration force shutdowns of schools and classes.
A child near North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, going to school. Photo: Robert Atanasovski.
In the latest indication of the country’s demographic problems, Education Minister Vesna Janevska said on Tuesday that enrolment for the 2026-27 school year, while still not final, is already sharply below last year’s 17,921 first-graders.
“We expect this trend to continue next year, which is disappointing,” Janevska told media.
The decline is even more striking over a longer period. In the 2016-17 school year, 23,266 children entered first grade (f, data from the State Statistical Office shows. The number fell to 21,656 the following year and, despite occasional slight increases, continued a broadly downward trend.
The shrinking cohorts are already forcing changes
The shrinking cohorts are already forcing changes to the school network. Janevska said that around 200 fewer classes will operate in primary education this year, while secondary education will have around 100 fewer classes.
The government also expects 26 rural schools to close during the school year because they have either too few or no newly-enrolled first-graders.
Some have only five to eight pupils in total, Janevska explained, arguing that keeping very small schools open can leave children in combined classes with pupils from several grades, limiting both the quality of teaching and opportunities for socialisation.
She said that pupils would generally be transferred
She said that pupils would generally be transferred to larger schools, but that combined classes in smaller schools would still remain where necessary, particularly where they are at a significant distance from more populated areas.
Demographer Donco Gerasimovski, a former director of the State Statistical Office, told Meta.mk news website that low birth rates and the emigration of young families are driving the decline.
Gerasimovski noted that many children also disappear from school rolls during a school year as families leave the country.
According to my calculations, we ‘lose’ between 1,500
“According to my calculations, we ‘lose’ between 1,500 and 2,000 pupils in just one school year because of emigration,” he told Meta.mk.
The shrinking number of first-graders is only the clearest visible signs of a demographic decline that has been building for years.
Over the past three-and-a-half decades, the small landlocked country has failed to produce tangible economic and democratic uptick that could have kept people from leaving, or join the EU, in large part due to the former Greek blockade over its name and the current Bulgarian impasse that centres around contested identity issues.
The results of the last national headcount carried out in 2021, showed the country’s population has shrunk by 9.2 per cent over two decades since the previous census, from roughly 2.1 million to just over 1.8 million.
Source: balkaninsight.com
