Half of the staff in 1.5 lakh schools in India are contract teachers

For more than a week, contract teachers in Puducherry have been protesting about the regularisation of their jobs. On February 3, their protest march towards the Assembly was stopped by the police. The protest in Puducherry is the latest in a series of demonstrations carried out by contract teachers across the country demanding fair treatment and regularisation of their jobs.

Less than a year ago, contract teachers staged a sit-in protest in Puducherry near the Assembly for over four days. They called off their agitation after Chief Minister N. Rangasamy reassured them of the government’s commitment towards the regularisation of their jobs.

Months later, in November 2025, Puducherry’s Home and Education Minister A. Namassivayam said that the government was planning to regularise the services of 292 contract teachers. Still, the protests are back again this year.

The Puducherry incident is just the latest flashpoint in a broader national struggle of contract teachers, that spans Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Jharkhand, over unfair treatment and lack of permanent positions at various points of time.

Contract teachers, often referred to as para teachers, guest teachers, and shiksha mitras, were initially hired by States to meet teacher shortages in the early 1990s. These teachers were employed on a short-term basis for wages lower than those of regular teachers.

According to the latest UDISE+ data, teachers employed on a contractual and part-time basis form about 16% of India’s school teacher workforce today. In absolutes, that translates to over 16 lakh teachers hired for lesser wages.

Often, these contracts are rolled over, and contract teachers continue to work as much as regular teachers, without the benefits that come with the latter’s position, such as higher pay and stability. Research reports have suggested that hiring contract teachers has become a cost-effective move for States to ensure teacher availability.

In fact, a research report by the World Bank published in 2009 noted that salaries earned by contract teachers were one-fourth or less of those earned by regular teachers.

While these teachers form only 16% of the entire workforce, a school-level analysis shows that the problem is more pronounced in specific areas. In over 1.5 lakh schools in India, contract and part-time teachers make up at least half of the entire teaching workforce.

As shown in the chart below, in about 21% of private schools, at least half of the workforce are contract or part-time teachers — the highest such share among all types of schools. Close to 8% of State government schools, totalling more than 77,000 schools, also fall under this category.

As per the latest data in 2024-25, this trend is similar across rural and urban areas, an interesting fact, as this shows that the lack of teachers alone can’t be the reason for hiring contract teachers.

The chart below shows the State/UT-wise share of schools where contract and part-time teachers make up at least half of the workforce.

A State-wise analysis shows that most of these schools with a higher reliance on contract and part-time teachers are concentrated in the northeastern States, such as Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.

More than 30% of schools in Jharkhand, Haryana and Chandigarh also show this trend.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court, on November 14 last year, held that administration cannot “misuse” contractual labels and ordered the regularisation of all Chandigarh teachers appointed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and who have completed more than 10 years of service.