A Greek island school is down to its last 2 students, and the classroom may soon close for good.
On Kalamos, the sole teacher at the island’s last school says the sixth graders now sit in front of unused desks and benches, while the nearby kindergarten was shuttered 3 years ago. When the two students move on to middle school on Greece’s mainland next year, the school will be mothballed.
The island’s year-round population is just 80. A decade ago, Kalamos had 40 children in local schools and public daycare. Today, 7 teenagers make a choppy ferry crossing to school on the mainland, and they miss class on days when strong winds make the trip unsafe.
'Usually, teachers are placed on these islands against their wishes,' Ntalaka told The Associated Press. 'Whereas for Kalamos there are teachers and kindergarten teachers, as far as I know, who want to come — but there are no children.'
Falling enrollment across Greece this year prompted authorities to close 75 schools and suspend or extend suspension of classes at more than 400 others. The problem is not limited to one island. Across Europe, the report says, shrinking populations are emptying classrooms in remote communities, mountain villages and small islands first.
The region has 16 of the world’s top 20 oldest nations, particularly in Southern Europe, according to the independent World Population Review. Byron Kotzamanis, co-founder of the Institute of Demographic Research in Athens, said the cycle is self-reinforcing: 'Closing schools leads to young people not staying and to them leaving.'
That means fewer births, fewer residents and, eventually, 'dead settlements that will become nursing homes,' he said.
Kalamos has tried to hold on. Ntalaka said officials are trying to spread the word, and the school would stay open if 2 families arrived. But she also said there is 'no sign of any comers.'
Aivaliotis, one of the island’s 7 teenagers, said he would like to stay but sees departure as inevitable. 'Of course I would like to stay here,' he said. 'I love Kalamos. It is my home. But there’s no development at all.'
The numbers come first. When schools shut, young families leave, and the market for local life shrinks with them. For taxpayers and governments alike, the lesson is blunt: population decline is not just a demographic story, it is a bill that arrives later in the form of empty classrooms, broken service networks and islands that cannot sustain themselves without constant public support.
Capital rewards clear rules and communities that can keep people, work and opportunity in place. Kalamos shows the opposite: once the next generation moves out, the administrative state can slow the decline, but it cannot easily reverse it.
