On the first day of school, education minister Vesna Janevska told first-graders they might want to ask for "a little brother and a little sister". The line was meant to be warm. The problem is who said it - the official in charge of the system - to whom, six-year-olds, and where: in a country that closed 26 schools in a single year.

The reply that arrived with numbers

Levica came back with a counter-proposal that has a law, a percentage and an amount attached. Its parliamentary group proposes that the state take over 20 percent of a family's remaining housing loan for every child born or adopted.

"Instead of minister Janevska's approach, we are proposing 20 percent for a little brother, 20 percent for a little sister," said MP Amar Mecinović, arguing that a demographic crisis is not solved with appeals but with material conditions and long-term policy.

Behind the proposal is a figure worth holding on to. Macedonian households owe almost 2 billion euros on housing loans alone - around 40 percent of all household debt. In one year that debt grew by 273 million euros. That is the context in which a family decides whether to have a second child: not an appeal, but a monthly instalment.

The schools already gave the answer

According to figures presented at the press conference, in one year there are 433 fewer classes, 3,000 fewer first-graders and 26 newly closed schools, bringing the country to a total of 148 empty schools.

That is not a forecast about the future. It is a list from this autumn. Every one of those 148 empty schools was built because somebody calculated there would be children there - and the calculation was correct at the moment it was made.

The reactions are sharp, but not all about the same thing

MP Jovana Mojsoska accused the government of running policies that give families no support: maternity payments running months late, a nursery place obtained by pleading, pregnant workers losing their jobs. "Minister Janevska, in the same style, told first-graders to ask for a little brother and sister, in a country with the lowest minimum wage in Europe and the widest social gaps," she wrote.

Part of that statement is verifiable data and part is a political judgement, and the two should be read separately. But the core of the objection does not depend on who says it: there is no demographic policy that consists of a message addressed to six-year-olds.

What is left on the table

Levica's proposal will be assessed in parliament, where an opposition bill has a well-known life expectancy. But its value is that it sets a measurable standard: 20 percent of a loan, per child, with a number that can be calculated and challenged.

If the government thinks that is the wrong solution, the fastest way to show it is to offer its own - with a percentage, an amount and a deadline. An appeal to first-graders is not a policy. It is a sentence for the cameras, in a country where the cameras are already filming empty classrooms.