Teacher Wastage in Pakistan: How Education Systems Employ Teachers but Lose Instructional Capacity

Pakistan has expanded teacher recruitment across its public education system over the past decade, yet policy and monitoring reports continue to document substantial rural, school-level, and subject-specific teacher shortages. In this article, I extend the concept of educational wastage to teachers, shifting attention from the loss of teachers to the loss or underuse of instructional capacity among formally employed teachers. I identify three forms of teacher wastage. Pre-deployment wastage occurs when appointment does not result in classroom instruction because teachers cannot take up or sustain placements, political influence directs placements away from school staffing needs, or teachers recorded as employed do not teach. Structural wastage occurs when teachers in schools are diverted from or misaligned with instruction through transfer instability, non-academic duties, or subject or grade-level misassignment. Erosive wastage occurs when teachers remain employed but lack adequate pedagogical preparation, induction, mentoring, or continuing professional support. Pakistan’s administrative systems track teacher positions, payroll, transfers, and attendance but provide limited evidence of whether employed teachers sustain classroom instruction. Illustrations from India, Nigeria, and Bangladesh suggest the framework’s relevance beyond Pakistan without claiming generalizability. Teacher wastage offers a basis for examining how education systems may retain teachers while losing instructional capacity.