Peloponnese: 26 school units suspended

Twenty-six school units in the Region of the Peloponnese will not open their doors in the 2026-2027 school year. According to the Government Gazette issue published on 11 August and presented by ERT, nineteen kindergartens and seven primary schools are being placed under temporary suspension of operation. The reasons differ from case to case and are three: zero enrolments, a lack of the minimum required number of pupils, or the lack of a suitable school building. The recommendation to the Education Ministry was submitted by the Regional Director of Education for the Peloponnese, Dimitris Oikonomopoulos. Decisions of this kind are updated every year at this time, on the basis of the available enrolment figures, and several of the units on the list have not been operating for years.

The kindergartens suspending operations are located in five regional units. In Argolis they include the two-teacher kindergartens of Ermionida and Ligourio, as well as the kindergartens of Lyrkeia, Dimaina, Skoteini and Thermisia. In Arcadia the kindergartens of Valtesiniko, Kastri and Neochori are suspended, in Corinthia those of Spathovouni and Megalos Valtos and the 3rd Nemea kindergarten, while in Lakonia the one-teacher kindergartens of Flomochori, Skoura, Agios Nikolaos Voion and Vrontamas. In Messenia the decision covers the kindergartens of Longa and Marathopoli, as well as the Special Kindergarten of Filiatra. Among the primary schools the list includes the Special School of Leonidio, Karytaina, the one-teacher school of Lagkadia, the two-teacher schools of Logganikos and Karyes, and the schools of Foinikounta and Trikorfo.

The geography of the list tells a story of its own. These are almost exclusively mountain and semi-mountain settlements of the interior, along with small coastal communities outside the tourist centres. In settlements like these the school is not only an educational facility but the main reason a young family decides whether to stay or move away. When it closes, taking the children to the nearest school centre becomes a daily obligation, often on narrow mountain roads and over long distances, and acts as a further incentive to leave. The presence on the list of two special school units, at Filiatra and Leonidio, adds a further issue, since pupils with disabilities find it harder to cover distances.

This development comes in a region that also lags behind the national average on other measures, as the regional retail trade figures announced by ELSTAT show. The shrinking of the school population in the Greek provinces does not concern the Peloponnese alone; it is a common pattern in mountainous and remote areas, where the loss of jobs accelerates the exodus, as is happening with the protests over redundancies at the West Macedonia Lignite Centre. The suspension is explicitly described as temporary, meaning that a school unit can reopen if enrolments materialise. In practice, however, a return is rare, since it presupposes a reversal of the settlement’s demographic trend. The number of pupils per unit was not made public.