More than 32,000 posts of teachers and principals vacant in state-run and grant-in-aid schools in Gujarat

More than 32,000 posts of teachers and principals are lying vacant in various government as well as grant-in-aid primary, secondary and higher secondary schools in Gujarat, the Legislative Assembly was told on Wednesday.

Responding to a set of questions raised by Congress MLAs during question hour about the education scenario, Education Minister Kuber Dindor informed the Assembly that 29,122 posts of teachers and 3,552 posts of principals were lying vacant in the state-run as well as government-aided Gujarati and English medium schools across the state as on December 2022.

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Further analysis of the data suggested that of these 32,674 vacant posts, 20,678 posts were not filled in government-run schools, while 11,996 posts of teachers and principals are lying vacant in granted schools. In all, more than 17,500 posts of government primary teachers were lying vacant.

In Kutch district alone, there are 1,507 vacancies, followed by 1,152 in tribal-dominated Dahod, 869 in Banaskantha, 724 in Rajkot and 692 in Mahisagar district. The data also revealed that 14 out of 33 districts in Gujarat do not have a single government-run English medium school and not a single district has a government-run secondary English medium school for classes 9 and 10.

Similarly, the state government does not run any English medium higher secondary school for classes 11 and 12, while there was not a single grant-in-aid English medium primary school in 31 districts.