School’s out forever at these abandoned educational buildings from around the world – bells no longer ringing, corridors silent, blackboards never to be written on again. But having evaded the bulldozers thus far, these disused schools, colleges and universities survive either as ghostly relics or as repurposed spaces with a hidden past. Who knows what stories the walls would tell if they could? Please note that some of these sites are inaccessible and fenced off for good reason, so don't go trespassing...

Once one of two educational facilities serving the unincorporated Midwestern community of Elmira in the early 20th century, this ramshackle structure is the last schoolhouse standing in what is now considered to be a ghost town. Believed to have been left to rot after the Second World War, the school is but a shell of itself today, sitting sadly on the side of the road.

With holes in its ceiling, missing windows and signs of impending collapse inside, the Elmira schoolhouse looks to be living on borrowed time. Former residents of the town have expressed wishes that the building be given a new lease of life, and urban explorers think it would make a great filming location for horror movies, but there don’t seem to be any current plans to revamp the school.

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Put up for sale in 2015 after standing empty for three years, much of the University of Strathclyde's Jordanhill Campus was later demolished in favour of a new housing estate. However, there are a couple of original features of the old campus that remain, including the listed David Stow Building (pictured); a former teacher training college completed in 1922. It now contains several luxury apartments.

Completed in 1879 during Japan's Meiji era (a period of Japanese history running from 1868-1912), Uwaoka Elementary School comprises three interconnected spaces that welcomed students all the way up to 2001. Its wooden skeleton is a fine example of Meiji architecture, with pretty sakura (cherry blossoms) draped over its roof in the spring. While many of the world’s abandoned campuses have been left forgotten or neglected, this school has been saved from wrack and ruin...

The former Uwaoka Elementary School is the oldest locally-preserved school building in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is now managed and maintained by residents of the area and up to four generations of graduated pupils. It's open to visitors on weekends and public holidays, who will see for themselves how the worn desks and chairs are still laid out in lines, as if a swarm of excited children are about to burst through the door.

First used for educational purposes in 1873, this turreted Victorian site (complete with a ballroom) was the base of the Royal Indian Engineering College before its operations moved to India in 1906. From 1911, the estate was privately-owned for nearly three decades before being taken over by London County Council, who established the Cooper’s Hill Emergency Training College for teachers here in 1946. The campus eventually became part of Brunel University in 1980 to offer courses in design and technology.

Though courses at Brunel’s Runnymede campus proved popular, increased maintenance costs meant the university had to transfer its operations to its current main site in Uxbridge. By 2007, the campus had been completely abandoned. Part of it has been recently revived as a luxury retirement village, including a swimming pool inside the original Victorian building, and adding a putting green to its grounds. Much of the remaining campus has been razed to make way for further development.

It's been a long time since this late 19th-century mining camp saw its last resident, but the shadows of its past remain remarkably present. At one point, over 1,000 people were thought to have lived at Ruby. A school was built to educate the town's children, where four teachers oversaw eight grades. It is said that more than 150 children attended the school at Ruby’s population peak in 1938.

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After mining activities petered out at Ruby, it became a hippie commune from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, before being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. While much of Ruby’s buildings are dilapidated, the schoolhouse has retained its structure and is one of the best-preserved properties in the town. There are books and pieces of furniture still inside, with a slide and teeter-totter board in the yard. It’s possible to visit Ruby on a self-guided tour from Thursday to Sunday, which helps support its conservation efforts.

After an earthquake devastated the Chilean city of Talca in 1928, the Escuelas Concentradas ('Concentrated Schools') were constructed as part of a wider project to restore the community. Designed by the Sociedad Constructora de Establecimientos Educacionales, this site combined the Carlos Salinas Men's High School and President José Manuel Balmaceda y Fernández Girls' High School, and was intended to withstand the tests of time and symbolise the importance of education to Chilean culture.

When another high-magnitude earthquake damaged the buildings in 2010, it was rendered unusable. There were plans to salvage it, but a huge fire shortly followed and decimated at least 50% of what was left after the earthquake. As of 2013, Escuelas Concentradas de Talca is now a heritage property and designated national historic monument.

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Eaton Elementary had its first building (pictured) completed in 1905, after the city of Hattiesburg experienced a surge in population. It is named after George Eaton, one of the town's first settlers, who donated the land on which the campus was developed. The second phase was a mid-century expansion, built in a style that deliberately contrasted with the original Romanesque Revival architecture. The school served Hattiesburg’s children for around 80 years.

By the late 1980s, Eaton’s operations had wound down and the building fell into disrepair. In 1991, it was recognised as a Mississippi Landmark and was inscribed to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, protecting it for the future. Repairs on the school’s roof were started in 2009, but were thwarted by structural issues resulting from rain damage, so a temporary roof was installed. The building is said to have been stabilised in 2015, but it seems that funding for further restoration work is needed.

Founded in 1992 by an Islamic charitable trust of the same name, the Jameah Islameah School was housed in this quintessential Victorian mansion, which originally functioned as an orphanage then as a ballet school. It provided an Islamic education to 11 to 16 year-old boys when it was swept up in an anti-terror investigation in 2006.

In September 2006, more than 100 police officers raided the school (alongside a number of London locations). It has been closed ever since, though no one was ever arrested and the trust have always denied any wrongdoing. They still hope to be vindicated and ultimately plan to reopen the school, which has been damaged by vandals over the years.

Built in the 1910s and originally known as Public School Number Four, Annie Lytle Elementary School in Jacksonville was renamed in 1957 to honour an admired former principal. However, infrastructure changes were happening in the city at that time, and construction of a nearby highway interchange soon signalled the end of Annie Lytle as an active school – noise pollution drowned out classes on the second floor, and the school's location became harder to reach, resulting in its eventual closure in 1960.

Urban myths surrounding the campus have earned it the nickname 'the Devil’s School', with ghost stories ranging from psychotic janitors to deceased schoolchildren. After being officially condemned, damaged by a fire and threatened with demolition, the school was declared a historic landmark in 2000 and is now cared for by volunteers, who still hope to see it bought and repurposed one day. However, there are no such plans at the time of writing.

Designed by a team of celebrated architects and completed in 1986, the Universitätszentrum is a Brutalist vision in glass and concrete. This campus of four main buildings used to be home to the Vienna University of Economics and Business administration building and its Mathematics faculty. When WU relocated to a different part of the city in 2013, the site was used on an interim basis by other Viennese academic institutions such as the Technical University, the Academy for Applied Arts and the Biology Centre, while developers discussed what to do with it.

One of the Universitätszentrum’s four units has now been repurposed for residential flats, with another occupied by Vienna’s Labour and Social Court since 2015. As for the other two buildings, plans for their future are unclear, although they still seem to serve as temporary premises for educational institutions every now and again. Otherwise, the grounds mostly remain deserted, with the glass and concrete architecture making an intriguing subject for passing photographers.

The world changed dramatically in April 1986 when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, belching radioactive matter into the air in the worst nuclear disaster in history. Around 335,000 people were evacuated from the Ukrainian city of Pripyat and other nearby areas when a 19-mile (31km) wide exclusion zone was established around the blast site. Pripyat has been abandoned ever since, leaving behind several empty kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools.

Written reports and photographs from people visiting the lost schools of Pripyat document sorry scenes including forgotten toys, exercise books with the pages still open, rotting desks and child-sized gas masks strewn across classroom floors. Many of the buildings in Pripyat are too dangerous to access, so always listen to your licenced guide – you’ll need one to enter the exclusion zone as a tourist.

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