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Champasak Eliminates Volunteer Teacher Program After Full Civil Service Recruitment

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Champasak Province has officially ended the use of volunteer teachers after recruiting all remaining volunteers into the civil service, provincial authorities announced at the end of December 2025.

Provincial education officials reported that the province now has zero volunteer teachers, marking the completion of a long-running transition toward a fully formalised teaching workforce.

Champasak first began assigning volunteer teachers during the 2013–2014 and 2015–2016 academic years, with a total of 1,118 volunteers placed in schools across the province. By 2023, authorities had recruited 671 of them as civil servants, leaving 307 volunteers. In 2025, 38 volunteers stopped working, reducing the number to 269.

Under the 2025 implementation plan, the province recruited all remaining volunteers into formal positions. This included 180 national defence civil servants and 89 teaching civil servants, as well as the recruitment of eight additional contract teachers. With this step, Champasak declared the official abolition of volunteer teachers in the province.

National Efforts to Address Teacher Shortages

Champasak’s move comes amid wider national efforts to address chronic teacher shortages, particularly in remote and hard-to-reach areas.

In June last year, the Ministry of National Defense announced a plan to recruit 2,000 soldiers to serve as substitute volunteer teachers nationwide, in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Sports. The initiative aimed to support schools in mountainous and rural villages where infrastructure remains limited and teacher vacancies persist.

Selected military personnel would receive specialised training before deployment to classrooms.

Authorities launched the program as an immediate response to long-standing staffing gaps caused by low teacher salaries, limited career prospects, and rising living costs, which have discouraged many volunteers from remaining in the education sector.

Yet, the shortage remains severe in some areas. In Savannakhet Province’s Xepon district, for example, only nine out of 109 schools had sufficient teaching staff as of mid 2025, while more than 500 teaching positions remained vacant across the province.

Officials said the use of substitute teachers, alongside civil service recruitment, forms part of a broader government strategy to reduce student dropouts, maintain school operations, and stabilise the education system while longer-term reforms continue.

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