In 2020, 65 children were born in Dolno Palčište, in the municipality of Bogovinje. Of those, 45 are abroad. This autumn, three first-grade classes were supposed to be formed at the Derviš Cara school. So far 18 pupils have enrolled.

Headteacher Zenihate Memeti states the number without comment, because the number does not need one: "On the interior ministry's list we have a total of 63 pupils, and 25 are supposed to enrol. At the moment 18 have." Local representative Vulnet Akiki adds that the number keeps falling because of conditions, and that some families live abroad.

That is a picture from one village. The problem is that the same picture repeats itself across the entire country - and on the same day.

Struga: four schools, four empty yards

On 1 September the bell did not ring at the schools in Poum, Žepin, Bogoica and Nerezi. Two of them are satellite classes of the central Nuri Mazari school in the village of Dolgožda, where three pupils each were all that was left. Headteacher Kaim Dauti says the decision was taken to raise the quality of education - a formulation that sounds better than "there was nobody to teach".

Mušteba Veliu, who worked at that school from the day it opened 42 years ago, said what everybody knows: "There are a lot of emigrants. All the young people have gone abroad."

Bitola: two schools running with one pupil each

Three satellite schools in the Bitola villages of Porodin, Kanino and Dihovo are being mothballed this year for lack of pupils, mayor Toni Konjanovski announced. On top of that, 13 classes across eight primary schools are being merged. The pupils will continue at the nearest schools, with the municipality providing transport.

Konjanovski stressed that the schools are "not formally being closed" and can start working again if there are pupils. That is a carefully chosen sentence - on paper the door stays open, and in reality nobody moves back to a village whose school has no pupils.

The strangest part of the same decision is the other half: in Poeševo and Kremenica the satellite schools will keep operating even though each has just one pupil, at the parents' request. One child, one classroom, one teacher. Five other satellite schools have no new first-graders at all, but lessons continue with the pupils they already have.

The figure that tells the whole story

In the municipality of Bitola, 665 first-graders enrolled this year, with 6,903 pupils in primary and 2,914 in secondary education. The administration confirmed the reorganisation will not lead to teachers being laid off - which means the system is covering the gap with people rather than with solutions.

And there is the distinction worth noticing. Closing a school is not a cause - it is a consequence arriving twenty years late. The children born in 2020 are enrolling in first grade now; their parents' decision to leave was taken much earlier, and nobody has changed it since.

Every September will bring a new list of villages where the bell did not ring. The question is not whether the list will grow, but what gets done while there is still somebody left to come back.