The number of students in Greek schools has been declining steadily for years. According to the Ministry of Education, about 1,210,000 students are enrolled in primary, secondary and vocational schools for the 2025–2026 academic year, compared with 1,363,912 in 2018–2019.

This has led Greece to suspend operations at 714 schools as declining birth rates leave classrooms empty. The school closures are affecting not just remote Greek villages and islands, but also major urban centers like the Attica region.

The impact of Greece’s demographic crisis is most evident in kindergartens and elementary schools. While 312 kindergartens were closed in 2018–2019, the number has risen to 355 for the 2025–2026 school year. Similarly, 247 elementary schools were closed in 2018–2019, rising to 319 in 2025–2026. Attica, Greece’s most populous prefecture, has also seen the closure of 77 school units.

he Ministry of Education confirmed that the number of pupils in Greece’s elementary schools has dropped to 488,018—a decline of 111,388 (19%) over the past seven years.

The rest of the reported 714 closures involve middle schools, as high schools are usually located in large towns and attract students from surrounding areas. Overall, the closures represent about 5% of the total number of schools in Greece.

According to Greek law, a school closes when enrollment falls below students, although schools in Greece’s remote villages and small islands are exempt from this rule. The school closures particularly impact Greece’s rural areas, where some children may face daily school commutes of up to 80 kilometers.

Commenting about the looming demographic crisis, Education and Religious Affairs Minister Sofia Zacharaki said, “Classrooms mirror the situation in our maternity wards and the number of births, which, unfortunately, has been falling for decades in our country,”