In Kheda Madhopur village of Agar Malwa district, a small, two-room primary school has become a stark reflection of the crisis unfolding in Madhya Pradesh's education system. As many as 55 children from Classes 1 to 5 are enrolled here, but only one teacher is currently available to teach them all subjects - including Hindi, English, Science, Social Science and Mathematics - across all grades.
The other teacher posted at the school has been assigned to government duty under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls since November.
The impact inside the classroom is immediate and visible. On one half of the blackboard, the teacher writes the lesson for Class 4, while on the other half, he writes for Class 5. In the adjacent room, a single blackboard is divided into three sections to accommodate Classes 1, 2 and 3. Teaching happens in fragments. Attention is divided. Learning is compromised.
"The teachers are engaged in BLO (Booth Level Officer) and SIR work. The children are suffering. I am the only one here," said Bharat Kumar Jatav, the lone teacher at the school. "Today, I asked the children to memorise their English lesson and write it in their notebooks. After that, they start talking because I cannot attend to everyone at once. The fourth and fifth graders are sitting together. Earlier, I taught Classes 1 to 3 and the other teacher handled 4 and 5. Now everything is happening together."
The children, too, feel the disruption. "When Sir goes to the other class, we don't understand what is written here. Then the children shout and we cannot study properly," said Raj, a Class 5 student.
Kheda Madhopur is not an exception. Across Madhya Pradesh, tens of thousands of teachers have been pulled out of classrooms for election-related and administrative work. More than 65,000 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) have been engaged in door-to-door voter verification since November 4, and a large number of them are school teachers. Many of these teachers are posted in single-teacher schools. In several cases, even guest teachers have been assigned SIR duties, leaving schools without any teaching staff for days.
High Pressure
According to the State Level Teachers' Association, the workload has become unbearable.
"For the last two months, teachers have been under extreme pressure," said Jagdish Yadav, the association's state president.
"We are ready to cooperate with the government, but the government must also understand which responsibilities should be given to teachers and which should not. In many districts, academic work was informally deprioritised. More than 50,000 teachers were engaged in SIR work, and many schools were left without even a single teacher. The pressure has been so intense that several teachers have even died due to work stress," he alleged.
The opposition has raised sharp questions over the impact on education. Congress state president Jitu Patwari said, "The education department has fallen prey to corruption. Literacy is declining, children's education is deteriorating, and the budget is rising, but no one knows where the money is going. Children's futures are being put at risk for SIR."
The data supports this concern. Madhya Pradesh has 92,071 schools and 3.93 lakh teachers, but approximately 22% of them are engaged in SIR and other government duties. The budget for the School Education Department rose from Rs 25,953 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 36,582 crore in 2025-26, an increase of about 41%. Yet, the literacy rate has declined from 76.7% in 2021-22 to 75.2% in 2023-24, well below the national average of 80.9%.
The student-teacher ratio is also worse than the national benchmark. Madhya Pradesh has one teacher for every 33 students, compared to the national average of one teacher for every 28 students. As many as 12,210 schools are running with only one teacher and, during the budget session, the Congress claimed that nearly 70,000 teaching posts remain vacant.
Government's Take
The state government says it is trying to bridge the gap. School Education Minister Uday Pratap Singh said, "We are recruiting around 32,000 teachers. 24,000 eligible teachers have been promoted, and 76,000 guest teachers have joined schools from July 1."
However, teachers engaged in BLO and SIR duties are scheduled to be relieved only on February 7, 2026 - the day Class 12 board examinations begin in the state. Class 10 exams will begin four days later.
Ironically, the government itself had issued an order in 2016 stating that teachers from high school and higher secondary, and especially those who teach mathematics and science, should not be assigned election or other government duties. On the ground, however, teachers are routinely pulled into Census work, election verification, mid-day meal administration, surveys, and special government drives.
As a result, classrooms are often the first casualty.
