KHYBER: About 37 primary schools for girls in Khyber have been closed down owing to shortage of teachers and non-payment of salaries to teaching staff for a long time.

Officials at education office said that they were faced with shortage of at least 700 female teachers in Bara, Jamrud and Landi Kotal that resulted in the unannounced closure of 37 primary schools for girls.

They said that the closure of those schools also dealt a serious blow to enrolment of girls during the ongoing campaign in Khyber while girls admitted to those schools had stopped attending their classes owing to continuous absence of teachers.

Requesting anonymity, officials said that apart from the unannounced closure of 37 girls’ schools, there were at least 81 more primary schools for girls in Khyber with an average strength of 300 students where only one teacher was performing duty.

Officials say they repeatedly informed high-ups about the issue

They said that education department was running most of the closed schools on an ad hoc hiring of teachers with a fixed salary and there was no proper service structure for those ‘part-time’ teachers.

Officials said that the ad hoc teachers either stopped attending to their official duty on their own or were relieved from job after their salaries were abruptly suspended due to paucity of funds.

“Teaching process at 37 girls’ primary schools has now completely halted with hundreds of girl students forced to abandon their studies while we make unrealistic claims about achieving the enrolment targets in Khyber,” said an official.

Landi Kotal topped the list of closed schools with 21 while 12 and four more schools were closed in Bara and Jamrud respectively, according to a list prepared by the district education office.

The closure of schools attracted wrath of parents, students and civil society members, who expressed their anger and disappointment over the apathy of both education department and elected representatives.

Officials at the education office, however, insisted that they had repeatedly informed their high-ups about the situation but no remedial steps were taken.

Meanwhile, locals and teachers of government primary schools in Tirah valley told this scribe that enrolment campaign in the valley was a mere formality as most of the government schools were either closed due to security situation or most students were not attending their classes due to fear of sudden clashes between security forces and terrorists.

They said that instead of attracting more out of school children to education, the existing strength of Tirah students shrank to almost half as parents were reluctant to send their children to schools due to insecurity.

They said that teachers in the valley too were hesitant to attend to their duty owing to law and order situation and threats from local terrorist groups.

In upper Bara, education department was yet to open a school for both boys and girls with more than 400 students enrolled in three informal schools.

Residents of upper Bara told this scribe that teachers in the three informal schools, operating in private buildings, were also not getting their salaries on a regular basis while education department absolved itself from paying them salaries on the pretext of shortage of funds.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2025