This year 166 students enrolled in the first year at the Josif Josifovski secondary school in Gevgelija. Two years ago there were 218. That is 52 fewer students - almost a quarter - in just two school years.

The trend is not a straight line but a mountain. In the 2021/2022 school year, 176 students enrolled in the first year, the following year 174, then 204, and in 2024/2025 the peak of 218. Since then it has been downhill: 186 last year, 166 this year. This year 173 ninth-graders finished primary school in Gevgelija, which means some of them went on to secondary school somewhere else.

The vocational profiles are hit hardest. Four students enrolled to train as cooks and waiters, and six as car mechanics. The municipality asked the Ministry of Education and Science to allow classes with fewer students - three grammar-school classes with fewer than 24 students each, and two three-year vocational ones. The ministry agreed to the grammar-school classes, but not the vocational ones. In the end, the ten students interested in those trades enrolled in mechanical engineering.

A small grammar-school class - allowed. A small class for cooks and car mechanics - not allowed. If the country has a surplus of cooks, waiters and car mechanics, that is a logical decision. If it doesn't - who did this calculation, and based on what?

The municipality had warned that without the requested classes the school would face cuts to teaching hours for a large number of teachers, and eventually staff redundancies. At a session of the Gevgelija municipal council, councillor Borče Nečevski of ZNAM proposed protecting, or licensing, the vocational profiles, so that only people with the right training could work as cooks and waiters - and in that way raise interest in these trades.

Some young people are leaving for other municipalities and bigger cities, for profiles Gevgelija doesn't offer. When a town stops offering trades, young people don't wait - they go where the trades are. The question is whether they'll ever come back.