19,031 Born, 14,500 Sitting Down in First Grade: Where Are the Missing 4,500 Children?

Around 14,500 first-graders have been enrolled so far for the 2026/2027 school year, Education and Science Minister Vesna Janevska announced. The figure is not final - enrolment runs until the end of September. But even as it stands, it raises a question that birth rates do not close.

The children due to sit down in first grade this year were mostly born in 2020. According to the State Statistical Office, 19,031 live births were registered in the country that year. The gap with those enrolled so far is around 4,500 children - nearly 24 percent of an entire generation.

The decline is not just continuing - it is accelerating

In the 2016/2017 school year, 23,266 first-graders were enrolled. In 2023/2024 - 19,848. The following year 19,452. In 2025/2026 - 17,921. And now around 14,500.

Look at the pace, not just the numbers. Between 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 the difference was 396 children. The following year the drop was 1,531. This year, based on currently available data, around 3,400. Each year the hole is bigger than the last.

The birth rate really is falling - from 19,031 live births in 2020 to 16,061 in 2024. But the timing matters here: children born in 2024 start school in 2030. Those walking into classrooms this year were born when live births were still above 19 thousand. So a falling birth rate does not fully explain today's gap.

The other factor has a name everybody knows and nobody wants to write into a report.

The schools are emptying, the teachers are multiplying

This year there are around 200 fewer classes in primary and another 100 fewer in secondary education. In 26 rural schools not a single first-grader has enrolled, and some of them are set to close.

And now the number you will not find in any party statement. In the 2023/2024 school year there were 955 regular primary schools and 18,831 teachers. By 2025/2026 the number of schools had fallen to 927, while the number of teachers rose to 19,461. That is 28 fewer schools and over 600 more teachers - in just three years.

The Ministry says there will be no dismissals of teachers on permanent contracts, and one of the solutions on the table is expanding all-day teaching.

One system, two different countries

The demographic picture is not the same everywhere. While rural areas lose their pupils and their schools, parts of Skopje need additional classrooms and teaching staff. Internal migration towards the capital and the larger centres breaks the education system from both ends at once - in one place there is nobody left to teach, in the other there is nowhere to teach them.

For context, at the start of the 2024/2025 school year 180,627 pupils were enrolled in regular primary schools and 67,143 in secondary. A total of 247,770 children in the system, with an annual decline of 0.8 percent in primary and 0.2 percent in secondary. The drop is sharper among primary pupils - which means the secondary schools are waiting their turn.

The final number of first-graders will be known once enrolment closes. Until then, one image is worth keeping: 19,031 babies were born in this country in a single year, and six years later around 14,500 sit down in a classroom.