According to the Haryana Education Department, 1,050 government schools across the state have only one teacher, while 107 schools have an enrolment of fewer than 10 students, reflecting disparities in teacher availability and student enrolment across districts.
Ambala has the highest number of single-teacher schools at 189, closely followed by Yamunanagar with 186. Mahendragarh has 68 such schools, Sirsa 63, Bhiwani 60 and Kurukshetra 50. Fatehabad accounts for 43, Rewari 39, Gurugram 36, Palwal 34 and Nuh 32.
The figures also show that 107 government schools have fewer than 10 students. Kurukshetra has the largest number of such institutions at 21, followed by Yamunanagar with 18, Bhiwani with 13 and Ambala with 11. Fatehabad and Hisar have seven each, while Mahendragarh has six and Karnal four.
The imbalance has brought the delay in teacher transfers and rationalisation of staff into focus. Despite Haryana having more than 30,000 junior basic training (JBT) teachers, several schools continue to operate with inadequate teaching staff, while some institutions have comparatively higher teacher strength.
The Education Department has maintained that rationalisation is necessary to redistribute teachers from schools with surplus staff to those facing shortages. However, the exercise and the general transfer drive have remained pending for years. The transfer policy for JBT teachers has not been implemented for nearly a decade, according to the department-related figures.
The shortage has also been reflected in data placed before the Haryana Assembly earlier this year. In February, School Education Minister Mahipal Dhanda informed the House that 298 government schools were functioning without a regular teacher, while 1,051 schools had only one permanent teacher.
The state had 21.55 lakh students enrolled in government schools during the 2025-26 academic year. The government reported a pupil-teacher ratio of 27:1 in primary classes, 18:1 at the upper-primary level and 22:1 at the secondary and senior-secondary levels.
However, state-level averages can conceal shortages at individual schools. A school with one teacher may have to manage several classes, with the teacher responsible for instruction across grades as well as administrative duties and other school responsibilities.
The state also faces a substantial number of vacant teaching posts. Information presented in the Assembly in February showed 15,451 vacancies across government schools as of January 2026. These included 7,707 posts for trained graduate teachers and elementary school headmasters, 3,998 postgraduate teacher posts and 3,746 primary teacher and head teacher posts.
Nuh accounted for the largest share, with 4,954 vacancies, followed by Yamunanagar with 1,721, Palwal with 1,595, Gurugram with 1,130 and Faridabad with 934.
The Haryana government has said that it is working to fill vacant posts through recruitment and promotions, alongside online transfer drives and the engagement of teachers through the Haryana Kaushal Rozgar Nigam. In an earlier response to the Assembly, the government said these measures were intended to ensure need-based deployment in schools facing staff shortages.
National education data also points to the scale of the issue. The Ministry of Education's UDISE+ 2025-26 figures recorded 1,278 single-teacher schools in Haryana across all management categories. The state Education Department's latest figure of 1,050 relates to government schools, so the two numbers reflect different coverage and should not be treated as directly comparable.
The Right to Education Act prescribes pupil-teacher ratio requirements at the elementary level and sets norms for the number of teachers based on school enrolment. The continuing presence of single-teacher schools raises questions about how effectively staffing norms are being met at the institutional level, particularly where teachers must handle multiple grades.