The only gymnasium in Debar, "28 November," enrolled just 32 students in the first enrollment round - out of 238 available places. A figure that isn't just a statistic, but a diagnosis for a town's future.

The breakdown is telling: 7 students in the Macedonian-language program and 25 in the Albanian, out of a total of 44 applicants in the first round. For comparison, last year 95 students enrolled in the same round. The school says it expects a larger turnout in the second enrollment round, scheduled for June 23, with a lowered minimum point threshold.

But the hope in a "second round" is thin comfort. The empty desks in Debar are a direct consequence of something everyone sees, but few say out loud - the young are leaving. Emigration, relocation to bigger cities, and the increasingly common choice of vocational secondary schools in Skopje, Tetovo, Ohrid and Struga are emptying out the small communities.

When a gymnasium can't fill even a sixth of its places, that's not one school's problem - it's a signal that a whole town is slowly losing its young generation. And while the central government boasts of education reforms, in Debar the question is much simpler and sadder: who will the school work for if there's no one to sit in the desks?