There are 115,000 empty jobs for teachers in Punjab’s government schools. This is an increase from 70,000 vacancies.
In Punjab, more than 9,000 primary schools don’t have enough teachers. Each of these schools only has two or three teachers.
Lahore alone has over 1,500 empty positions for Primary School Teachers (PST). Because of this shortage, teachers find it hard to move to other schools. Female teachers especially have to teach students who live far away from where they live, and they’ve been doing this for more than five years.
Earlier, the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) would hire 14,000 teachers. But because of a change in government, this hiring process stopped.
Also, there’s a need for 30,000 Instructional Support Teams (ISTs) for middle schools and over 15,000 Student Success Teams (SSTs) for high schools in Punjab.
Officials say that 30,000 more teachers will retire by 2027. The Department of school education warns that if new teachers aren’t hired, the education system will suffer greatly in the next three years.