There are 36,178 teacher vacancies across provincial and national schools, countrywide, Minister of Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Education, and Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya told Parliament yesterday (21).
Responding to a question, the Prime Minister said that 1,501 of those vacancies were in national schools.
She said that in provincial schools, the vacancies were as follows: Western Province: 4,630, Southern Province: 2,513, Central Province: 6,318, North Western Province: 2,990, Uva Province: 2,780, North Central Province: 1,568, Eastern Province: 6,613, Sabaragamuwa Province: 3,994, and the Northern Province: 3,271.
The PM said that to address the situation, recruitments had already been made since 28 July, 2024, for national schools to fill vacancies in Science, Mathematics, Technology, Foreign Languages, Sinhala, English, and Tamil medium GCE (A/L) subjects.
The Prime Minister added that 353 graduates, who were selected for Grade III (A) of the teaching service but had not yet assumed duties, were scheduled to be appointed within the next two months.
She said that requests had been submitted to the Recruitment Review Committee, headed by the Secretary to the Prime Minister, to take prompt steps to fill the remaining teacher vacancies in the education service. There are 247,000 teachers in government schools countrywide.