The Financial Times reports that more than 760 schools across Greece will suspend operations in the new academic year, citing a steep decline in student numbers.
The closures — affecting over 5% of the country’s schools — are not confined to remote villages and islands but extend to parts of Attica as well, with officials warning of a looming “demographic collapse.”
“Our classrooms mirror the situation in our maternity wards and the number of births, which, unfortunately, has been falling for decades in our country,” said Education and Religious Affairs Minister Sofia Zacharaki.
A loss of 111,000 pupils in seven years
According to ministry data, primary school enrollment has dropped by more than 111,000 pupils in the past seven years — a 19% decline since 2018.
“The fall is very rapid, and in Greece it is particularly steep,” said Alexandra Tragaki, professor of economic demography at Harokopio University of Athens, noting that fewer people today are of childbearing age compared with previous decades.
This year, 766 of Greece’s 14,857 schools will close for falling short of the 15-student minimum. Most are primary schools, though closures are spreading across all levels. A few may reopen if numbers rebound within three years, but most will not.
Exceptions are made in border regions, such as Pserimos in the Dodecanese, where the local school is reopening for the first time since 2009 to teach just five children.
Crisis-driven demographic decline
As the FT notes, Greece’s demographic downturn accelerated during the debt crisis of the 2010s. Since 2011, deaths have consistently outnumbered births. Between the 2001 and 2021 censuses, the number of women in the core reproductive age group of 20–40 fell by 500,000 — a 31% drop.
This was compounded by the mass emigration of educated Greeks during the crisis years, sharply reducing the pool of potential parents.
By 2022, annual births had slipped below 80,000, while in 2023 deaths were nearly double that figure. Greek women now have their first child at an average age of over 32. Fertility has dropped to 1.35 — among the lowest rates in Europe — and births outside marriage remain rare.
Officials acknowledge the impact of school closures, especially in rural areas, where some children may now face daily commutes of up to 80 kilometers. Yet demographers caution that financial incentives alone are unlikely to reverse the trend.
