Data provided by the magazine suggests that there were 604,000 students enrolled in schools of general education in Lithuania in 2001, as compared to merely 330,800 attending schools in 2017. The sharpest decline of 3.5 times was reported in the Visaginas municipality, with a drop by a factor of nearly three recorded in the districts of Neringa, Skuodas, Pagegiai, Zarasai, Alytus, Anyksciai, Ignalina, Varena, etc. Even the growing municipalities of the cities of Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda reported student numbers shrinking by about 1.5 times.
"The demographic gap has a major effect on our school and higher education system," Gintaras Safarinas, editor-in-chief at Reitingai, told a news conference on Wednesday.
In his words, the demographic tendencies show that some municipalities may in the long run end up with merely one school and pre-school institution. Sarafinas said the small number of students, especially in schools in rural areas with 30-40 students, has a drastic negative effect on the quality of education, as the institutions lack specialists, with the same teacher teaching a few subjects to elementary students and even gymnasium students.
