The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has been functioning with more than half of its positions vacant, according to official data, creating a situation that academics say has led to prolonged dependence on contract staff and affected curriculum planning and textbook development and production.
Against the sanctioned strength of 2,844 posts, only 1,219 posts were offered, leaving 1,625 vacancies – a vacancy rate of 57.1%, according to data shared on December 17, 2025, by Union Minister of State (MoS) Jayant Chaudhary to the Rajya Sabha in response to queries from Trinamool Congress MP Sameer Islam.
The bulk of the vacancies were in the Group C category. Of the 1,520 sanctioned positions in Group C, only 411 were filled, leaving 1,109 positions vacant – a vacancy rate of approximately 73%. In Group B, 369 of the 677 sanctioned positions were filled, resulting in 308 vacant positions, or about 45% vacant. In Group A, 439 of the 647 positions were filled, leaving 208 positions unfilled – approximately 32% unfilled.
On December 27, NCERT had announced recruitment for 173 non-academic posts, including nine Group A posts, 26 Group B posts and 138 Group C vacancies. HT has seen a copy of the ad.
The data shared by Chaudhary in the Rajya Sabha also shows that in the last five years between 2020-2021 and 2024-2025, NCERT has employed 445 permanent staff (including 229 academics and 216 non-academics) and 3,567 contractual staff – nearly eight times the permanent employment. Notably, there was no permanent hiring in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 periods, even with 720 and 746 contract employees hired in those years respectively.
In its March 2023 report, the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports had asked NCERT to “complete the process of filling up vacancies with permanent posts” by the end of 2023. In its March 2025 report, the committee had directed NCERT to fill up all vacancies by the end of 2025 and recommended “discontinuation of contractual appointments”.
NCERT officials did not respond to HT’s queries for comment.
“Recruitment is an ongoing process and efforts are being made to fill vacant posts in accordance with the provisions of relevant recruitment rules,” Chaudhary said in his response.
The staff shortage has come into sharper focus as NCERT faces scrutiny over its now-withdrawn Class 8 Social Science textbook which included a section on “Corruption in the Judiciary”. NCERT officials had earlier told HT that the controversial chapter was written by a committee of members, which included a lawyer, but was not reviewed by anyone from the legal fraternity.
Group A, B and C officers of NCERT are responsible for various administrative and clerical tasks including supervising the printing, publishing and distribution of the textbook in schools and among students. They are also responsible for coordination between various committees and experts, including contributors who write, edit, and review textbooks.
Long vacancies and reliance on contractual staff weaken any academic institution, said Anita Rampal, former dean of the Faculty of Education at Delhi University. “When people lack job security, their motivation, institutional commitment and academic freedom suffer,” she said. “Insecure and vulnerable temporary jobs make it difficult to question important decisions or contribute meaningfully to institution building.”
Rampal, who had earlier served as Chairman of NCERT Textbook Development Committee for Primary Level, highlighted the delay in publishing and issuing textbooks. “The Grade 8 Social Sciences Textbook, Part 2, was intended for the 2025-26 academic session and was supposed to be available by October or November. Its release at the end of February 2026, just before the annual exams – and then its withdrawal – reflects not only serious incompetence, but also cruelty towards children, while raising serious questions about the reliability of the textbook production and review process, as we are currently witnessing,” she added.
In a written response to a separate parliamentary question on vacancies in autonomous bodies under the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), the government told Rajya Sabha on December 17 that 899 administrative posts, 232 teaching posts and 404 non-teaching posts were vacant in NCERT.
On January 31, the Council invited online applications via a recruitment advertisement for 117 different academic positions.
This development comes at a time when NCERT is rolling out new textbooks in line with the National Curriculum Framework in School Education (NCF-SE) 2023 and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, while also managing revisions, translations and digital content development.
“The high vacancy rate, especially in academic and technical support positions, could impact timelines for curriculum development, textbook revision processes, research outputs, teacher training programs and coordination across regional institutes,” said Navneet Sharma, a faculty member in the education department at Central University of Himachal Pradesh (CUHP), Dharamshala.
