The Assam government on Wednesday informed the State Assembly that 22 primary schools in the Binnakandi Assembly constituency are currently functioning with only one teacher, even though the state has a total of 39,531 primary schools, according to the UDISE 2025–26 database.
Replying to a starred question by MLA Badruddin Ajmal, School Education Minister Ranoj Pegu said Assam has 33,232 Lower Primary (LP) schools and 6,299 Upper Primary (UP) schools. Hojai district alone has 891 primary schools, comprising 745 LP schools and 146 UP schools.
The minister said Binnakandi constituency has 322 primary schools, including 276 Lower Primary and 46 Upper Primary schools. Of these, 22 schools are currently operating with only one teacher. The names of the schools and the teachers posted there have been provided in an annexure to the Assembly reply.
Responding to concerns about teachers being assigned election and other official duties, Pegu clarified that a school is generally categorised as a single-teacher school when one of its two sanctioned teaching posts remains vacant. He added that local education authorities usually make temporary arrangements by deploying another teacher or a Cluster Resource Centre Coordinator (CRCC) to assist such schools.
The minister further said that in exceptional cases where a school is physically functioning with only one teacher, district authorities avoid assigning that teacher election or other urgent public duties, as far as practicable, to ensure that classroom teaching is not disrupted.
Pegu also explained the government’s teacher deployment policy, stating that postings are made according to academic requirements and subject combinations. At the Lower Primary level, teachers are responsible for multi-grade teaching from Classes I to V, with the norm of two teachers per LP school while maintaining a pupil-teacher ratio of 30:1, depending on student enrolment.
