Village schools in Struga region shut this autumn as pupils disappear

Four village schools in the Struga region have remained closed this autumn because there were not enough children to form classes. In Nerezi there were no pupils at all, Bogojci and Poum had three each, and Dzepin counted only four students — numbers that made any regular or combined class impossible.

Inside the buildings no school bell rang and there were not even minimal conditions to open a classroom. The empty schools are a local, concrete sign of broader demographic trends that are steadily depopulating rural areas across the country.

Impact on staff and the local community

For Mushtaba Veliu, who worked for 42 years at one of these schools, the scene is painfully unreal. He has cared for the maintenance of the building for more than four decades and is retiring this month — at the moment when the school has closed its doors for good.

The closures also produced an immediate social and economic shock: around 35 teachers and other educational staff lost their contracts. Many had been employed on contracts for services for years, and with the disappearance of pupils the legal basis for their engagement vanished.

Local authorities point out that current law does not allow the formation of classes when the number of children falls below the legal minimum, nor does it permit the extension of short-term contract-for-service arrangements. As a result, the remaining pupils from these villages must now travel every day to the nearest central schools.

The situation in the Struga area is a small but concrete confirmation that the country’s demographic crisis is no longer just statistics on paper: it is closing village schools and leaving many education workers without an income.

Photo: press material from the event