Rebel AAP MLA’s poser on ‘education revolution’ in Punjab: a reality check

When Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Sukhveer Singh Maiserkhana went public with allegations of teacher shortages in government schools in Maur constituency, his allegations put his own government’s education record under scrutiny. The party suspended him for alleged “anti-party activities and indiscipline”. The Opposition seized on this episode. Beyond the political fallout lies a more practical question: what has Punjab’s much-publicised education revolution changed in its classrooms?(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.)The government has a record to defend. NITI Aayog’s May 2026 report, School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement, identifies Punjab among the stronger performers in learning outcomes. The government’s response to the findings celebrated the result as evidence of reform. But the report draws on several datasets, including PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024, UDISE+ and ASER. It is not simply a league table of states.There is also some history behind Punjab’s performance. The State recorded the highest numerical score in the Union Education Ministry’s Performance Grading Index for 2019-20, released in June 2021, before AAP came to power in 2022. Punjab shared the index’s highest grade, A++, with four other States and Union Territories. The 2026 NITI Aayog report uses a different framework, so the claim that Punjab moved from 27th to first should not be read as a like-for-like comparison. Its earlier record matters: the State’s progress did not begin with the present government.Join THEdge LinkedIn groupAAP has since made school education a central part of its political identity. Its initiatives include the Schools of Eminence scheme, teacher training, foundational-learning programmes, and larger parent-teacher meetings. Under the flagship scheme, 118 government schools were selected for upgrading. By March 2025, 14 had been inaugurated, while work at another 26 was reported to be complete or nearing completion, according to the Schools of Eminence progress report.Teachers and school leaders have also been sent for training at institutions in Singapore, IIM Ahmedabad, and the University of Turku in Finland. Mission Samarth focuses on foundational learning, while mega parent-teacher meetings have sought to involve families more closely in school affairs. These initiatives have changed the public conversation about government schools. Their lasting value, though, depends on what happens after the training sessions and inauguration ceremonies are over.The critical question is not simply how many schools have been selected, teachers trained or meetings held, but whether these interventions have translated into sustained improvements in classroom teaching and learning across the wider government-school system.A school needs more than upgraded buildings. It needs teachers who can cover the syllabus, teach the subjects assigned to them and give students regular classroom time. Employment security matters too, but regularising existing workers does not automatically fill every vacancy. Punjab’s 2023 measures covered 14,417 contractual employees, while a separate framework approved in 2026 concerned 65,048 outsourced workers across departments, including 7,704 in school education. These were distinct exercises, not a single count of teachers newly recruited into vacant posts.Staff shortageStaffing figures offer a less celebratory view. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s performance audit, Quality of School Education in Punjab, recorded 7,876 vacancies against 55,871 sanctioned Master-cadre posts as of March 2023. At the Lecturer or Post Graduate Teacher level, covering Classes 11 and 12, 4,403 of 13,904 sanctioned posts were vacant. The audit also found substantial gaps in some subjects. These historical figures do not establish the current vacancy position, but they show that staffing shortages were documented well before the latest controversy.In August 2026, Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains told the Punjab Assembly that 31,370 teacher posts were vacant across cadres. He attributed part of the Master-cadre shortfall to a court stay on promotions and said the government intended to fill posts through promotions and recruitment. Separately, a Samagra Shiksha review found that the proportion of government schools with an adverse pupil-teacher ratio rose from 18.6% in 2023–24 to 19.9% in 2024–25. The number of single-teacher government primary schools also increased, from 1,884 to 2,158, over the same period. The Assembly figure captures vacancies across cadres, while the review indicators point to how staffing pressures are distributed among schools.These figures do not cancel out Punjab’s learning gains. They point to a different part of the system. A State-level assessment records how students perform; it does not tell parents whether their own school has a mathematics teacher or whether classes are routinely being combined because posts remain vacant.The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 offers another perspective. In rural Punjab, 34.2% of Class 3 children could read a Class 2-level text, while 51.1% could solve at least a subtraction problem. Among Class 5 children, 61.4% could read a Class 2-level text and 48.8% could solve a division problem. Arithmetic improved between 2022 and 2024, while Class 5 reading levels declined. ASER and PARAKH use different methods, and neither establishes that teacher vacancies caused a particular learning outcome. Read alongside staffing data, however, they show why no single assessment can tell the whole story.The Maur dispute brings the question down to one school. The Education Minister said more than 90% of teacher posts in the constituency were filled. At the School of Eminence in Ramnagar, where the MLA’s son studies, the government cited 25 teachers against 30 sanctioned posts, serving 580 students across 19 sections. The reported exchange over the MLA’s allegations provides a starting point, not a final verdict. Five vacancies do not automatically mean the school cannot function adequately. The important questions are which posts are vacant, whether essential subjects are affected and how classes are being covered.There is a further problem of public accountability. A complete, current and publicly accessible record of school-wise staffing would allow parents and elected representatives to assess claims about teacher shortages against official data. Publishing sanctioned posts, teachers in position, subject-wise vacancies, enrolment and the number of sections would make it easier to identify where staffing gaps are most acute and whether essential subjects are adequately covered. Such transparency would also help assess whether the benefits of the Schools of Eminence programme extend to schools beyond the flagship list.Punjab’s achievements deserve recognition, but its earlier progress belongs in the story too. The rankings do not prove that staffing problems have been solved, just as the vacancies do not establish that the reforms have failed. The more useful test is whether children across the State can count on regular teaching, adequate subject coverage and the same basic conditions for learning, regardless of which government school they attend.Rahul Verma is an independent researcher and sociology educator