Punjab Faces Major Teacher Shortage

Before the start of the new academic year, the Punjab School Education Department will be short almost 90,000 teachers across the province.

Numerous schools in the province also lack senior scientific professors, headmasters, and headmistresses, which could endanger the education of many kids.

However, because of the continued political unrest, the administration was unable to hire all 16,000 needed school instructors.

After the end of the summer break, the province's new academic year will start on August 1. However, hundreds of schools are struggling with a staffing shortage.

During the two-month breaks, teacher representatives called for hiring for the open positions, but the problem has not yet been resolved.

The official from the school education department explained, "Thousands of schoolteachers in Punjab have been promoted to higher roles, while thousands more have retired during the past year, but recruitment has not been done to replace them.

In schools where senior scientific professors had retired and the kids were unable to pass the course without certified tutors, he claimed the issue was more serious. There are hundreds of open positions.

The previous provincial administration had made plans to hire 30,000 new instructors for public schools. The government attempted to hire 16,000 instructors in the first round, but it was unable to do so.

“After the removal of the PTI government, the PML-N government also did not begin the work for recruiting the 16,000 teachers. We were expecting that the recruitment would be completed during the summer vacations, but political instability during the past two months did not give time to the government to start the process,”, according to the official.

Now that the school year is about to start, there is a critical teacher shortage.

Rana Liaqat Ali, general secretary of the Punjab Teachers Union (PTU), urged the provincial administration to hire 16,000 new teachers as soon as possible. He claimed that the circumstance will have an impact on the pupils attending government schools.