Delhi Schools’ Middle Grades Face a Math, Science Teacher Shortage

This is the second article in a two-part series on how the government school system has been hollowed out in the Modi years. Read part one here.

New Delhi: In August last year, Kusum Lata successfully challenged the Delhi government, and its teacher-hiring agency, in the Delhi high court, to win her appointment as a mathematics teacher for middle grades.

What debarred her from completing a long and tedious recruitment process appears to be a trifle: Kusum Lata was put on a waitlist after successfully making it through a written exam in 2016, for a teacher vacancy advertised three years ago. She qualified after a few candidates dropped out. It’s then that the trouble began: the agency couldn’t decide whether its own waitlist was valid or not.

The candidate had to fight her way through the central administrative tribunal, which ruled in her favour, and then defend her candidature when the Delhi government challenged it in the city’s high court.

“We won at the tribunal, and then Delhi high court was also in our favour,” said Shiv Kumar Pandey, lawyer for Kusum Lata. His client declined to talk to me, but her hard-won appointment as a math teacher for middle grades is indicative of the hiring agency’s attitude of working to keep people out.

It has resulted in a drought of math and science teachers for middle grades – a drought which surely contributes to the largest cohort of out-of-school children in India being between 14 to 18 years of age; 20 million children are deprived of school in India in the secondary school age group of 14-18, a data point contained in The Economic Survey 2025-26.

The survey described as “concerning” the findings of the Government of India’s Parakh survey: only 55% students feel motivated to attend school, and less than half feel safe there, as reported in the previous article in this series.

Legal quagmire

These damning findings should have put teacher hiring into top gear, but the agency which hires teachers, the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board, or DSSSB – which Kusum Lata fought successfully – is caught up in a quagmire of legal cases, part of which arise out of the opacity and secretiveness that DSSSB operates under. It regularly posts on X which candidates are being given jobs as they have won in court.

DSSSB conducts many exams; its exams for teachers stretch over years between the vacancies being announced, announcement and conduct of exams, and declaration of results.

I reported on the DSSSB in 2017, its building guarded by barbed wire, when Arvind Kejriwal was chief minister of Delhi.

Chief ministers have changed. All else remains the same.

Chief minister Rekha Gupta’s announcement on the appointment of over 5,000 trained graduate teachers or TGTs, who teach middle grades, in October last year merely indicated intention to hire. The DSSSB closed applications for posts announced by Gupta in a month. It has yet to take the next step in the hiring: conduct of exams.

The hiring agency has also not declared results for other exams held in November for teacher vacancies announced earlier. Its chairman and secretary did not reply to calls, e-mailed questions, or to requests for an interview.

Meanwhile, the shortage of math and science teachers to teach middle or secondary grades has grown so acute, teachers told me, that lab assistants are doubling up as science teachers, or schools with six science teacher posts are functioning with a single teacher.

The teacher-hiring quagmire is made worse by teacher stratification.

Guest and contract teachers

India found a way to spend less on teachers by recruiting guest and contractual teachers who are not given benefits such as provident fund, medical allowance, paid leave, maternity leave and child-care leave. They are also not paid when schools close for vacation.

A number of teachers on such temporary contracts continued for a long time in their jobs. Now they have asked – through courts and on social media – why they should not be given preference when, and if, teacher recruitment takes place. The All India Guest Teachers’ Association posted on April 1: "Thousands of guest teachers have been working on daily wages in Delhi schools for the past 8-9 years. We expected the BJP government to increase our salary and pave the way for us getting permanent jobs. But we have been disappointed."

Contract teachers demanded equal pay for equal work, granted last year by the Central Administrative Tribunal, but not yet by their employers – both the Government of Delhi and the city’s municipality have not complied with the tribunal’s orders, says Manoj Vats, who heads the contract teachers’ association.

Vats says contract teachers have got a union registered, a brave move, since labour unions, present in India even during British rule, have been termed anti-development – in open court – by none other than the Chief Justice of India. The Modi regime has moved to outlaw strikes.

Both contract and guest teachers have demanded they be “regularised” or given permanent tenure, before fresh hires.

Aparna Kalra is a Delhi School of Economics alumnus whose forte is investigations, profiles and data journalism. She has reported for Reuters, Mint, and worked as a fact-checker on a Facebook project for AFP.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.