DRAFT — Punjab teachers reject 10pc enrolment target, call it unrealistic

• Suggested slug: punjab-teachers-reject-enrolment-targets
• Category: National
• Focus keyphrase: Punjab teachers enrolment targets
• SEO title: Punjab Teachers Reject 10% Enrolment Target as Unrealistic
• Meta description: The Punjab Teachers Union says schools cannot meet the 10 per cent enrolment target amid staff shortages and poor facilities, urging an independent audit of schools.
• Tags: Punjab, teachers, enrolment targets, school education, Punjab Teachers Union, Rana Liaquat Ali
• Original element: own data point — FP’s prior Punjab-education coverage (online paper checking, school carpooling for smog, IT internships) to place the enrolment debate in the context of the province’s education reforms
• Source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2635628/teachers-slam-enrolment-targets (Tribune, published 19 Oct 2026, 06:31 PKT)
• Story date: 19 October 2026

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RAWALPINDI: The Punjab Teachers Union has rejected the province’s 10 per cent enrolment increase target for schools, calling it unrealistic given the persistent shortage of teachers and the poor state of basic facilities in classrooms.

Punjab Teachers Union General Secretary Rana Liaquat Ali said enrolment targets should be set for each educational institution in consultation with its head and in accordance with the resources available to it, not imposed as a blanket figure from above.

Why teachers say the target cannot be met

Rana Liaquat Ali said it was not possible for every school to achieve a 10 per cent rise in enrolment because of the shortage of teachers and Class IV employees, along with inadequate basic facilities. School heads and teachers, he said, were already responsible for matching admissions to the number of students leaving after completing Grade 5 in primary schools, Grade 8 in middle schools and Grade 10 in high schools.

But pressuring teachers to hit the 10 per cent mark, summoning school heads and teachers to offices after school hours and making them sit outside for hours as punishment, and threatening them with dismissal amounted to encouraging fictitious enrolments, he said.

The union leader pointed to a contradiction in the department’s own position: authorities had earlier directed schools to eliminate fake enrolments immediately, he said, but were now setting targets so unrealistic that they could mislead senior officials with inflated numbers.

The obstacles schools face

He identified a list of barriers standing between schools and the enrolment goal: staff shortages, inadequate facilities, a lack of funds, excessive paperwork, and examination-related and non-teaching duties assigned to teachers. The temporary deployment of teachers and other employees to government offices, he added, further drained classrooms of the people needed to teach.

He urged the Punjab chief minister to commission an independent third-party audit of schools instead of relying solely on Education Department statistics, saying it would provide a more accurate picture of the challenges facing educational institutions.

Rana Liaquat Ali said teachers were not opposed to raising enrolment in principle, only to targets that ignored classroom realities. He asked the department to sit with head teachers, count the available desks, teachers and rooms, and then set a figure each school could genuinely reach. Unrealistic targets, he warned, only produced paper numbers that satisfied no one while putting teachers under unfair pressure.

Part of a wider reform debate

The dispute lands in the middle of a busy period for education policy in the province. Punjab has been pushing a series of administrative reforms, from online paper checking and screen marking by the boards to school carpooling measures to curb smog.

The government has also tried to connect education with employment through programmes such as the IT internship scheme offering stipends to graduates, while districts elsewhere in the country continue to struggle with basics such as getting textbooks to primary students in Bajaur.

Against that backdrop, the teachers’ complaint is that the headline targets are running ahead of ground realities. An independent audit, in the union’s view, would show what classrooms actually need before numbers are imposed on them.