• Ministry targets around 30,000 appointments by early 2027; CTU questions recruitment timeline
• Shortages in key subjects threaten syllabus coverage, education reforms
• Rural, estate schools bear brunt of uneven teacher deployment
• Teachers awaiting transfers remain stuck without replacements

Sri Lanka’s never-ending teacher shortage continues to disrupt schools, with recruitment delays, subject-specific vacancies, and issues in teacher deployment creating concerns about children’s access to a good education.

While the Government has announced intentions to recruit thousands more teachers, questions remain over whether the process can adequately address the shortages affecting schools across the country.

CTU pinpoints deeper issues

The Government may recruit only around 15,000 teachers by February 2027, falling short of its announced target of 23,000, while the country’s teacher shortage continues to disrupt schools and widen educational disparities, according to Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) President Priyantha Fernando.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Fernando said that the country faced approximately 46,000 teacher vacancies, with every province experiencing a shortage of at least 4,000 teachers and national schools alone having around 4,800 vacancies.

He said that no teachers had been recruited into the teaching service since 2023, apart from approximately 4,500 recruits from National Colleges of Education (NCOE).

The Government gazetted graduate teacher recruitment in March, attracting 173,000 applications, of whom 163,000 sat the examination held on 24 May. However, Fernando criticised the delay in releasing the results, which were published only recently.

Although the Government had announced plans to recruit 23,000 teachers, he said that only around 18,600 candidates were expected to be interviewed, potentially limiting recruitment to approximately 6,200.

“The truth is, there is no preparation whatsoever to recruit teachers this year,” he said, adding that the recruitment process would likely extend into February 2027. 

“According to information I personally investigated, the Government did not allocate funds in the 2026 Budget for the recruitment of new teachers, which is why it is dragging this process,” he added.

Fernando warned that the shortage was also affecting teacher transfers, with inter-provincial and inter-zonal transfers reportedly suspended for around two years. He said that teachers who had served in the same locations for 10–15 years were struggling to obtain transfers because schools could not release them without replacements. 

The impact, he said, was particularly severe in the Northern, Eastern, North Central, and Uva Provinces, as well as the Central Province and the estate sector, where shortages of Science, Mathematics, and Technology teachers were affecting students’ education.

He cautioned that the shortage could undermine the Government’s education reforms, arguing that introducing practical curricula would be difficult without sufficient qualified teachers. 

“There are more than 10,000 vacancies for primary teachers, but the Government has not gazetted any primary teacher vacancies under the current recruitment process,” Fernando said.

The CTU President further warned that the shortage could worsen, estimating that vacancies may increase by another 10,000 by May or June 2027 due to retirements and teachers leaving the service following the final salary increase scheduled for January.

He also questioned whether the Government intended to address shortages partly by consolidating or closing smaller schools, noting that approximately 1,600 schools had fewer than 50 students and that 269 schools had reportedly been closed already.

Fernando further criticised the continued employment of development officers in teaching roles, arguing that their recruitment into the teaching service would not necessarily increase the number of teachers available to schools. He said that approximately 11,000 development officers were already working in schools and alleged that the majority of the candidates expected to be recruited through the current process were development officers.

“The biggest problem is that this is severely impacting educational reforms,” he said, stressing that the Government needed to recruit substantially more teachers to address the existing shortage. 

“According to Central Bank reports for 2025, the number of children dropping out of school before reaching Grade 9 has increased. Because education does not function properly in these schools, the dropout rate among children from low-income families is increasing significantly. With the collapse of education in disadvantaged provinces, a range of related problems have also been created,” he said.

Fernando urged the Government to introduce immediate solutions to address the shortage of qualified teachers for key GCE Advanced Level (A/L) subjects, particularly Science, Mathematics, and Technology, warning that students’ education and access to subject streams could be affected if the vacancies remained unfilled. 

“The Government must find a solution to the shortage of teachers for the main A/L Science, Maths, and Technology streams. If solutions are not provided for this in the next two to three years, this sector will completely collapse,” he added. 

“Education has fallen to a low level and the Government has subjected the field to severe neglect,” Fernando stressed, holding the Government accountable for the majority of the consequences faced by students and teachers.

Ministry outlines recruitment plans

The Government expects to recruit approximately 30,000 teachers by early 2027 through ongoing graduate recruitment and appointments from NCOE, as Sri Lanka continues to grapple with a teacher shortage estimated at between 35,000 and 40,000, according to Ministry of Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Education Secretary Nalaka Kaluwewe.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Kaluwewe said that the recruitment process was currently underway, with the Government authorised to recruit 23,000 teachers through an ongoing examination, while a further 6,000 teachers were expected to be recruited from NCOE early next year.

“We have authorised the recruitment of 23,000 teachers from this examination. It will take two to three months because we have to conduct the examination in stages,” he said, adding that the process would continue through successive rounds until the recruitment target was met.

He said that the Government also expected to appoint around 6,000 teachers from the NCOE and a further 2,000–3,000 Bachelor of Education (BEd) graduates, bringing the total number of new teachers expected to enter the system to approximately 30,000 by early 2027.

Acknowledging the scale of the existing shortage, Kaluwewe said that the number of vacancies could fluctuate depending on teacher retirements and other changes in the workforce.

Addressing concerns over why the vacancies had remained unfilled despite repeated recruitment commitments, the Secretary attributed the delays in recruiting graduate teachers primarily to legal restrictions on conducting competitive examinations.

He explained that teacher recruitment was governed by the Teachers’ Service Minute, which provided for three recruitment pathways: appointments from the NCOE, recruitment through competitive examinations, and recruitment of BEd graduates.

Kaluwewe added that a Supreme Court order had stayed the teacher recruitment examinations and that the court’s final order released in 2025 had cleared the way for the recruitment process to proceed. He further maintained that the ministry had acted after receiving the necessary clearance, stating that the recruitment gazette had been issued in February, the examination held in May, and the results released since.

The next stage would be interviews, which were scheduled to begin in November, he said, also noting that more than 150,000 candidates had sat the examination and that processing results on such a scale required time.

Meanwhile, the Secretary acknowledged that the shortage was also affecting teachers seeking transfers, as schools could not always release teachers without replacements.

On concerns raised by the CTU that sufficient funds had not been allocated in the Budget to address the shortage, Kaluwewe rejected the claim, saying funding remained available for recruitment.

“I can definitely deny that. Budget allocations are available and if additional funding is required for recruitment, we can request it even in the middle of the year for salary payments. This is because salaries fall under recurrent expenditure, which is different from capital expenditure,” he said.

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Beyond vacancies: A system under strain

Sri Lanka’s growing teacher shortage is a structural issue driven by recruitment delays, inadequate workforce planning, and a shortage of qualified candidates in critical subjects, with rural and under-resourced schools bearing the brunt of the crisis, according to educationalist Dr. Tara de Mel.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Dr. de Mel said that Ministry of Education data indicated approximately 40,000 teacher vacancies at the end of 2025, most of them in provincial schools.

“The shortage is also unevenly spread,” she said, noting that more than 3,000 schools operated with fewer than around 10 teachers each, while shortages were particularly acute in English, Science, and Mathematics.

She warned that understaffed schools struggled to offer students a complete curriculum, disproportionately affecting children in rural, estate, and under-resourced communities. 

Dr. de Mel attributed the shortage partly to recruitment failing to keep pace with attrition caused by retirements, resignations, and overseas departures. She also pointed to the lengthy recruitment process, which involved multiple approvals, gazette notifications, examinations, interviews, and appointments. Provincial-level recruitment adds to the complexity of filling vacancies across the country.

“The pipeline is narrow. Many subject areas, especially English, Mathematics, and Science, have too few qualified candidates and graduates often do not want remote and rural school postings,” Dr. de Mel added.

The shortage has raised concerns about educational outcomes, particularly for students preparing for the GCE O/Level and A/Level examinations. According to Dr. de Mel, students in understaffed schools lose valuable instructional time, while examination candidates risk falling behind in syllabus coverage.

“Syllabus coverage falls behind, so students lean more on private tuition. This favours families who can pay and widens the urban-rural and socioeconomic gap in exam outcomes. Students facing the O/Level and A/Level examinations have only one chance in the cycle, so a year without a qualified Mathematics, Science, or English teacher cannot easily be made up. The long-term cost is also to the equity of opportunity in the public system,” she said.

Meanwhile, difficulties faced by teachers seeking transfers have highlighted weaknesses in workforce planning and deployment. Dr. de Mel explained that transfer requests often depended on the availability of replacement teachers, leaving some unable to move from their current postings.

“It shows that the system has no buffer. Teachers cannot be released because there is nobody to replace them, so transfers, which are meant to be a routine service entitlement, become dependent on recruitment. Teachers have long reported this problem,” she said.

She cautioned that teachers who remained in remote postings without transfer opportunities could become demoralised and less inclined to remain in the profession, potentially worsening existing shortages.

To address the issue, Dr. de Mel called for the expedited implementation of approved recruitment programmes, including the recruitment of graduates and NCOE diploma holders. As interim measures, she suggested employing retired teachers and trained graduates on short-term contracts and expanding shared or online teaching arrangements for subjects with limited teacher availability.

She further stressed that addressing the shortage required more than periodic recruitment drives, calling for a coordinated approach.