Gurugram, May 16 -- Around 40 government primary schools in Gurugram district are functioning with only a single permanent teacher, forcing them to not only handle educational issues, but also double up as an administrator and also handle midday meal arrangements for hundreds of students, according to data made available by the district education department. As per the data, there were around 1,500 teaching vacancies across 363 primary and 210 secondary schools in the district, as of March. Education department officials acknowledged the shortage, which was also pointed out in a NITI Aayog report titled "School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement" for the 2024-25 period. The report found that across 23,000 government-run schools, including around 9,569 primary schools in Haryana, there were 7,626 vacancies for teachers. A senior education officer, who did not wish to be named, said, "Primary schools where the student strength is low are the ones that have a single teacher, but the department keeps sending teachers on deputation if it is required." The officer said that as primary schools focus on basic learning, students are divided by their learning level and not age. "The government has equipped the schools with smart classes and teachers are recommended to seek help from there. If there is any problem, the department is happy to look into their requirements," the officer said. Principals and teacher associations alleged that deploying teachers on deputation was only a temporary solution. Ashok Prajapati, president of the District Primary Teachers Association in Gurugram, said that there were teaching shortages at Government Primary School (GPS) at Khaintawas in Farrukhnagar block, GPS Behelpa and Daula in Sohna. "The government often deploys temporary teachers from other schools on deputation to these schools, but it is just a temporary solution." A teacher from one of the schools, not wishing to be named, said, "My school has around 80 students. Even though there are temporary deputations for two to three months, it does not help in educating the students properly." The teacher added that they had to club students from Bal Vatika to Class 5 in one classroom because of staff shortage. "We are only able to take joint classes. We can only cover basic subjects like addition, subtraction and basic recitals for the students. In-depth class-wise coverage of the subjects does not happen," the teacher said. In Haryana, government school teachers are recruited through state-level selection processes conducted by the Haryana Staff Selection Commission and Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC)....