The Department of Management Services has approved the recruitment of graduates with Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degrees into the Sri Lanka Teacher Service, paving the way for more than 31,000 teachers to be appointed by the end of 2026, the Ministry of Education said Wednesday.
The Ministry told NewsFirst that 23,006 candidates would be recruited on the basis of competitive examination results expected in September. About 15,000 will come from a limited competitive examination open to in-service graduates and the remaining 8,006 from an open competitive examination, with appointments issued before the end of the year. A further 6,500 Diploma Holders will be recruited into the service in December.
Recruitment will be carried out at provincial council level. The 23,006-strong intake matches the figure flagged in a March 3 Cabinet decision tied to the broader teacher-recruitment programme which Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya discussed with the Education Graduate Association in May, after the association argued that 2018/19 and 2019/20 cohorts had been left out of provincial council recruitment plans.
The examination tally of 23,006 will be drawn from the 163,433 graduates who sat the islandwide recruitment paper on May 24 — the first such exam in over three years after legal challenges before the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal were resolved. Of those who sat the paper, 66,991 were graduates already employed in the public service while 96,442 were external graduates.
The Ministry said Sri Lanka currently faces a teacher shortage of around 44,000 vacancies, meaning the 2026 intake will close roughly 70 per cent of the gap if all appointments are issued on schedule.
