IN Halimzai tehsil of Mohmand, Government Primary School Yaseen Kor Kamali has around 300 students and just one teacher. One person is expected to teach several grades, multiple subjects and hundreds of children at different stages of learning. Nearby, a high school also has vacant posts for its headmaster and subject teachers. This is not an education system struggling to cope. It is a generation being asked to learn without the basic conditions for learning.
The numbers show how widespread the problem is. An annual survey by the KP Education Department found 627 government schools non-functional across the province, including 411 in the merged districts and 216 in settled areas. Teacher shortages alone were responsible for 226 of those closures. North Waziristan had 111 non-functional schools, Upper South Waziristan 99, Upper Kohistan 68, Kurram 53 and Khyber 27. The crisis is therefore not confined to Mohmand or the former tribal districts. Mohmand is the photograph. KP’s education system is the story.
The province itself estimates that about 2.6 million children remain out of school, while the 2023 census put the figure at 4.9 million. Either number points to a deeply serious education crisis. The government has declared an education emergency, launched enrolment campaigns and announced recruitment drives. Yet across KP, the reality inside many classrooms tells us what these announcements often fail to capture. A school can exist on paper, children can be enrolled and a building can stand in a village, but without enough teachers, meaningful education is impossible.
In December last year, the government approved 10,074 primary teachers as a stopgap arrangement through Parent Teacher Councils because the province faced a shortage of around 19,000 teachers. The intention was understandable. Empty classrooms needed teachers quickly. But temporary arrangements cannot become the architecture of an education system. A teacher hired for a few months can keep a classroom open. He cannot build continuity, strengthen foundations or develop a generation of students.
The province has now announced another 7,946 teachers, while also proposing virtual classes in places where physical teachers cannot be provided. The announcement itself acknowledges how serious the shortage remains. But virtual education requires electricity, internet access, equipment and a learning environment in which children can actually use them. Technology can supplement a teacher. It should not become the government’s substitute for one.
The shortage also has a gender dimension. Female teachers are often difficult to deploy in remote areas because transport, accommodation and safety remain unresolved. Girls then face another barrier when they move beyond primary education. A school may have a building and students, but without appropriately qualified teachers, especially female teachers for girls’ schools, the educational journey breaks down.
The textbook problem makes everything worse. A teacher cannot properly teach hundreds of children without books, and a child cannot build a strong foundation by attending classes without the material needed for learning. When teachers are missing, textbooks arrive late and facilities remain inadequate, children may pass from one grade to another without acquiring the knowledge expected at that level. School attendance is not the same as education. Promotion is not the same as learning.
There is a wider lesson from countries that have significantly improved their education systems. Their experiences differ, but successful reforms generally share one feature: education was treated as a long-term public responsibility rather than a series of emergency interventions. Countries such as Finland, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam took different routes, yet each placed sustained emphasis on teachers, training, school resources and learning outcomes. KP does not need to copy any of them. It needs to recognise the principle behind their progress. Education cannot be built on temporary teachers, short-term fixes and announcements. It requires a permanent commitment to the people and institutions that keep classrooms working.
There is one more bitter irony in how KP celebrates success from its remote districts. A young man from Mohmand, Bajaur, Khyber or South Waziristan clears a competitive exam, joins the armed forces or reaches high office, and his photograph is shared as the ‘pride of the district’. He deserves the honour but invariably his domicile is local while his education is not. He studied at a better school in Peshawar, college in Islamabad or academy in Lahore. His roots may be there, but his opportunity came from elsewhere. The poor child who stays behind inherits the same weak school, too few teachers and a fragile foundation. He may pass matric, but he enters the race years behind those who had the chance to study elsewhere.aThis is how inequality becomes permanent.
We celebrate the child who managed to escape the system and then point to his success as proof that the system works. Meanwhile, thousands of children who never had the chance to leave are quietly left behind.KP needs to stop measuring educational progress only by announcements, enrolment figures and recruitment numbers. It needs to ask a harder question. What can an ordinary child actually learn in an ordinary government school?
For decades, children in KP’s poorest districts have been asked to learn with less, while families who can afford it send their children elsewhere for the education their local schools cannot provide. That cycle will continue until the province treats teachers, books, functioning schools and equal opportunity as necessities rather than temporary fixes. In Yaseen Kor Kamali, 300 children are not asking for much. They are asking for a teacher who can teach them, books they can read and a classroom where learning is possible. Three hundred children should never have to share one teacher and one blackboard.
—The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.
