Islamabad, Jan 4 : Teacher recruitment was effectively frozen in several parts of Pakistan for over five years. A ban on teacher recruitment is not fiscal discipline but educational sabotage as it quietly pushes children out of school by denying them qualified adults in classrooms, a report said.

Nearly 30,000 public primary schools are run by a single teacher in Pakistan. One person is expected to teach, administer, maintain records, manage enrolments, engage with parents and keep the school operational. This implies that one teacher is handling many classes at once, teaching in classrooms, doing paperwork, opening and closing schools.

It is not commitment but an institutional abandonment normalised over time, senior manager at think-tank Tabadlab, Fahad Zafar, wrote in an opinion piece in The News International.

Recruitment in Sindh was halted due to the authorities' inability to classify hard and soft posting areas correctly.

Hiring was stalled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa amid political and bureaucratic paralysis, including prolonged delays in Cabinet formation.

Similarly, School Education Department in Punjab abruptly stopped teacher recruitment in 2022, citing administrative restructuring. The decision was taken without a transition plan and without considering work of already overworked teachers, causing intensified workloads and deepened learning gaps.

Teacher hiring processes were repeatedly halted in Balochistan amid allegations of bribery and corruption. Court interventions were needed to stop recruitment from collapsing fully. Students continued to suffer as files moved between offices while inquiries continued.

In an opinion piece in The News International, Fahad Zafar wrote, "When teacher recruitment stops, access to education shrinks. Each year without hiring pushes student-teacher ratios further into dysfunction. Reversing this damage will now require a decade of uninterrupted recruitment and placement simply to return to baseline. That is a decade of lost learning and lost potential that no reform slogan can recover. Even when hiring resumes, the instability does not end."

Transfers and postings remain politicised as teachers posted in rural and underserved schools are frequently transferred to schools in urban areas through influence and connections. The schools that require continuity most remain without a teacher.

"Only recently, in 2024-25, has the system begun to move again. Sindh has recruited nearly 93,000 teachers after years of delay. Punjab has chosen to outsource thousands of low-performing public schools to private entities to cope with the issue. Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have announced plans to hire around 9,000 and 17,000 teachers, respectively, to address chronic shortages. These steps matter. But they come after more than half a decade of damage," the author wrote in an opinion piece in The News International.

"Let us be clear. A ban on teacher recruitment is not fiscal discipline but educational sabotage. It quietly but steadily pushes children out of school by denying them qualified adults in classrooms. Temporary budget relief comes at the permanent expense of a generation. Pakistanâ??s education crisis is driven by a lack of resources but also by abrupt decisions, poor execution and short-term political thinking. Millions of children have paid the price for administrative failure," he added

/IANS