Shrinking classrooms prompt new education strategy

[InTime News]

The Education Ministry announced plans for a 20-year nationalist strategy to redesign the country’s schoolhouse web arsenic falling birthrates and agrarian depopulation shrink student enrollment. First-grade registrations dropped from 115,000 successful 2010-11 to 71,181 successful the existent 2025-26 schoolhouse year, and are expected to autumn beneath 70,000 adjacent year, a diminution of astir 40%.

Education Minister Sofia Zacharaki said the study would representation the “real operational footprint” of schools so decisions trust connected “real information and not fragmented estimates.” The €300,000 study will analyse operating costs, schoolhouse capacity, transportation expenses and alternate organizational models.

The ministry signaled apt mergers of classes successful secondary schools and closures oregon consolidations of schools successful rural, mountainous and land regions with declining populations. The demographic diminution is besides expected to impact teacher staffing and aboriginal hiring.