The Azad Jammu and Kashmir government has announced plans to fill vacant teaching positions and introduce a digital attendance system in schools, as part of a wider effort to improve the education sector across the region. The decisions were taken at a meeting chaired by the Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education, Engineer Umair Naeem Advocate, where officials discussed recruitment, school monitoring and administrative reforms that have been pending for some time.
The meeting directed the education department to identify vacant posts for senior general line and science teachers, headmasters, computer instructors and subject specialists, and then refer them to the Public Service Commission. Officials will also determine the relevant quotas for these posts so that staff shortages can be addressed in an organised way. The department was further told to speed up recruitment against various teaching cadres under the departmental quota, and to make regular and ad hoc appointments under the existing rules.
Alongside recruitment, the government is pushing ahead with a digital attendance plan that could change how schools are monitored day to day. Under the plan, the Education Management Information System will install its attendance application in 50 primary schools in each district within 15 days. The department aims to extend the system to every educational institution across Azad Kashmir by March 2027. The meeting also reviewed the biometric attendance devices already installed in schools and directed officials to make all 1,900 of them fully operational within seven days. It further called for the immediate installation of the attendance application in the remaining 200 schools that do not yet have it.
The minister also raised the matter of the Class IX results from the previous academic session, expressing concern over the outcome and directing the relevant inquiry committee to submit its recommendations without delay. Attendance and results are closely linked, and a system that shows who is actually present in classrooms, both teachers and students, is a natural first step towards finding out where learning is falling behind.
This is not the first time Azad Kashmir has tried to bring technology and merit into its schools. The region’s prime minister, Iftikhar Gillani, has made education reform a central part of his government’s agenda, with a focus on information technology, artificial intelligence, robotics and modern technical education. Speaking at a meeting on education reforms in September, he said his main focus was education and that the future of nations was shaped in classrooms. He had served as education minister from 2016 to 2021, when third-party teacher recruitment through the National Testing Service and biometric attendance were introduced. The new digital attendance drive builds on that earlier work, extending a system that was first tried years ago into every school in the region.
The scale of the task is shown by a reform package approved earlier this year. In April, the Azad Kashmir government approved a Rs3.2 billion education reform package aimed at expanding schools and colleges and improving quality. Of that amount, Rs2.45 billion was set aside for school education and Rs766.5 million for higher education. The package included the upgradation of 868 institutions, the establishment of 182 new schools with 259 posts, and the upgradation of 653 schools with 2,692 new positions, while a further 200 schools were to receive 368 additional posts. The package was described as following a needs-based rationalisation policy, addressing gaps in student-teacher ratios and the uneven distribution of institutions. The recruitment drive announced now is the practical follow-through on those numbers, turning approved posts into teachers in classrooms.
Azad Kashmir starts this work from a stronger base than most of the country. Research on literacy in Pakistan has found that the region has a literacy rate of 77.4 percent, compared with 60.68 percent for Pakistan as a whole, the highest ranking in the country. The federal government and UNESCO have also been working to bring smart classrooms to 80 government girls’ schools in Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, with digital resources for students in remote areas and training for their teachers. The digital attendance system fits into this wider push towards a modern, technology-supported education system, one that the region’s leadership hopes will prepare young people for jobs that do not yet exist.
Whether the plan works will depend on the details that follow the announcement. An attendance application is only useful if teachers and students actually use it every day, and 1,900 biometric devices are only useful if they are switched on, maintained and connected. The deadlines are tight, fifteen days for the first fifty primary schools in each district, seven days to make every installed device work, and March 2027 for full coverage. Filling the vacant posts through the Public Service Commission will also take time, and the process must stay transparent. The Class IX results are a reminder of what is at stake. Azad Kashmir’s schools have a reputation worth protecting, and the government has now set itself a clear test: show up, count the gaps honestly, and fix them before the next results come in.
