Few things in this country deserve more pride than free education. Since it was introduced in 1945, under the reforms championed by C W W Kannangara, generations of Sri Lankan children have walked into a classroom without their parents paying for the privilege. The farmer's daughter in Monaragala, the estate worker's son in Nuwara Eliya, the fisherman's child in Jaffna and the clerk's son in Colombo were all offered the same start. That promise is a large part of the reason our human development indicators have long put us ahead of our South Asian neighbours and many other developing Nations.

Our 10,047 government schools, with more than 200,000 teachers paid for by the State, produce the great majority of our doctors, lawyers, engineers, managers, and administrative officers. The structure offers the same opportunity for every child, whatever their family's income, ethnicity, gender or address. It is the foundation of our professional class, and the reason a village child can still dream of a place in medical school.

That is why the figures now emerging should trouble every citizen. Education Ministry data obtained by The Daily Morning through a Right to Information request show that 40,185 teacher vacancies remained unfilled at the end of 2025. That is roughly a fifth of the current teaching force, missing from our classrooms. Of these, 978 were in National schools: 693 in the Sinhala medium, 18 in Tamil and 267 in English. The other 39,207, more than 97 per cent of the total, were in Provincial schools across the nine Provinces.

Worse still is the pace of the response. Only 425 teachers have been recruited so far this year, and as at 15 September not one had been appointed to a Provincial school. Those 425 amount to just over one per cent of the vacancies. More than eight months have passed. At this rate the backlog will not shrink but grow, because teachers keep retiring and moving on while too few arrive to replace them.

Behind every vacancy is a real classroom. Children in small rural schools feel this first and hardest, because their parents cannot buy the missing lessons at a tuition class. Those who can afford tuition will manage. Those who cannot will fall behind.

This is how equality of opportunity erodes. Nobody abolishes free education. It is hollowed out instead, one unfilled post at a time, until the right survives on paper while the reality depends on where a child happens to live. Free education was never meant only to open the school gate. It was meant to put a qualified teacher in front of every child who walks through it.

Nor is the burden carried by children alone. The teachers who remain are left to stretch across extra classes, and sometimes across subjects outside their training. Dedicated as they are, there is a limit to what any one person can do. A system that lets their workload swell without relief will, in time, lose more of them, and the gap will only widen.

We appreciate that the public purse is under strain, and that recruitment must be lawful, transparent and fair. But a country recovering from an economic crisis cannot afford to starve the system that produces its future workforce. A teacher's salary is not money that disappears. It returns itself many times over in graduates, taxpayers, innovators and citizens. Every rupee saved by leaving a post empty is borrowed from the future, and the interest is heavy.

We therefore urge the Education Minister to act, and to act now. Publish a clear recruitment plan with dates and numbers. Work with the Provinces to fast-track appointments to Provincial schools, where nearly all the vacancies lie. Give priority to the subjects and language media hit hardest, and make service in remote schools worth choosing through fair incentives and decent housing. Then report progress openly, so that parents and teachers can hold the Ministry to its word.

Since 1945, millions of children have crossed school thresholds that might otherwise have stayed closed to them. Many teach, heal, build and govern. The State did not merely spend money on them. It made a promise, and they built this country on it. Today's children are waiting to learn whether that promise still stands. The Minister has the figures. What the country needs is the will.