You can download the full report here.
Pakistan’s public education system faces a persistent and often misunderstood challenge: not simply a shortage of teachers, but an imbalance in how teachers are deployed across schools. The Missing Ustaani presents a province-wise analysis of teacher availability using the 2022-23 Annual School Census data, with a particular focus on primary and middle schools with girls’ enrolment. Although Pakistan has adequate sanctioned teaching posts as per an STR 30 benchmark, 195,550 positions remain vacant, resulting in an effective shortage of over 63,294 teachers in classrooms. This contributes to overcrowded classrooms, widespread single-teacher schools, and persistent inequities that disproportionately affect girls. To capture the environments where these pressures are most acute, the report also introduces a measure of “critical shortages”, identifying schools that not only exceed acceptable student–teacher ratios but also lack basic facilities such as toilets or safe drinking water. This combined burden highlights environments where both staffing and basic infrastructure fall short, compounding the barriers to effective teaching and learning. By reframing Pakistan’s teacher shortage as a workforce imbalance rather than a numerical deficit, The Missing Ustaani emphasises the need for data-driven deployment, improved teacher management systems, and targeted strategies to ensure that every child, especially every girl, is taught by a qualified teacher in a safe and functional learning environment.
Authors: Fahad Zafar, Muhammad Bilal Kakli, and Zaina Shahab
Research Team: Roha Afaq and Sajjad Hussain
Review and Editing: Shahab Siddiqi and Umar Nadeem
Design: Eman Sarwar
Fahad Zafar
Fahad Zafar is a Senior Manager at Tabadlab’s Education, Skills and Youth (ESY) Centre and a Malala Fund Education Champion, with over a decade of national and international experience in education policy, research, and programme implementation. His work focuses on foundational learning, teacher workforce reforms, parental engagement, education data systems, and public financing in education, including areas such as the District Education Performance Index (DEPIx) and non-salary budget tracking in schools.
At Tabadlab, Fahad has contributed to redesigning national education datasets, developing analytical frameworks for sector reports, and conducting research on devolution and service delivery. He supports evidence-based advocacy on critical system challenges such as teacher shortages, which is central to The Missing Ustaani.
Before joining Tabadlab, Fahad held key roles at Kearney, VTT Global, the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan, DAI, The Citizens Foundation, and Mott MacDonald. He holds an MPhil in Education Leadership and Management from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and a BBA from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi.
Muhammad Bilal Kakli
Zaina Shahab
Zaina Shahab is a Data Analyst at Tabadlab, where she works at the intersection of education data systems, public sector reform, and evidence-based policymaking. With a strong foundation in economics and mathematics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), she specializes in large-scale data analysis, indicator development, and research-driven insights for social sector transformation.
At Tabadlab, Zaina plays a key role in the World Bank–supported Data and Research in Education (DARE) technical assistance program. She contributes to strengthening Pakistan’s education data ecosystem by structuring and validating national datasets, resolving data discrepancies, and generating over 40 key education indicators for the Pakistan Education Statistics (PES) report. Her work also includes analysing federal and provincial budgeting data from the Financial Accounting and Budgeting System (FABS) to support the upcoming Public Financing in Education report.
Zaina supports collaborative, multi-stakeholder processes by working closely with provincial School Education Departments and the Pakistan Institute of Education (PIE) to advance data standardisation and capacity development. She has facilitated consultative meetings and conducted capacity-building sessions for government officials on data cleaning, indicator methodologies, and standardisation practices.
She is also part of a World Bank–funded parental engagement pilot, where she designs content and adapts implementation approaches using early data insights to improve foundational Urdu learning in public schools.
Before joining Tabadlab, Zaina worked as a Research Assistant at LUMS, where she analysed a decade of federal budget data, developed structured datasets for academic research, and built an interactive dashboard to visualise multi-year fiscal trends. She has also gained experience in stakeholder coordination and organisational culture through her previous role at Rayn.
Driven by a commitment to improving governance through high-quality data and analytics, Zaina brings strong quantitative skills, research rigor, and a passion for strengthening public systems in Pakistan.