PM Shehbaz Bans Police From Islamabad Schools and Frees Teachers From Election Duties
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has banned police and security personnel from using Islamabad’s schools and colleges, and has freed the capital’s teachers from election, census and other non-teaching duties. The decisions, announced on Thursday, 12 November 2026, come after 38 public schools and colleges in the capital were closed for up to three weeks in September so that police officers could be housed in them.
The prime minister issued the orders while chairing a meeting on Islamabad’s education sector. He said schools were meant for teaching, and teachers were responsible for teaching students — so there was no justification for using school buildings for any other purpose, even during law and order situations.
“School premises and buildings shall not be occupied by law enforcement agencies for any purpose,” the prime minister said, according to Dawn.
The Prime Minister’s Office followed the meeting with written instructions to the Ministry of Education. On Wednesday, the ministry sent a formal letter to the Islamabad administration and police, putting both decisions into effect.
What the prime minister decided
The announcement contains two separate decisions, and both are now in writing.
The first is a complete ban on accommodating police and security personnel in Islamabad’s schools and colleges during law and order situations. The ban covers every kind of use: schools and colleges may not be turned into temporary police camps, detention centres or deployment bases, and their buildings, classrooms and other facilities may not be handed over to any law enforcement agency.
The second decision is that teachers in Islamabad will no longer be given duties outside teaching. That includes election duties, census work and household surveys. Any such duties already assigned to teachers must be cancelled immediately, the ministry’s letter says.
Both decisions apply to institutions run by the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), the body that oversees public schools and colleges in the Islamabad Capital Territory.
What the letter says
The education ministry’s letter was addressed to five offices: the chief commissioner of Islamabad, the chairman of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the inspector general of police, the secretary of the interior, and the director general of the FDE. Sending it to all five at once means the order reaches both the civilian administration and the police leadership in the capital.
According to Dawn, the letter states that the premises, buildings, classrooms and other facilities of schools and colleges under the FDE “must not be occupied, used or handed over to any law enforcement agency, including for temporary campuses, personnel deployment, detention facilities or other operational activities, to prevent disruption to students’ education.”
On teachers, the letter is equally direct: “The prime minister has further directed that schoolteachers shall not be required to perform administrative duties, including election duties, census activities, household surveys, etc, in future. Moreover, such duties already assigned to teachers must be cancelled immediately in compliance with the prime minister’s directive.”
The wording matters. The ban is not limited to housing police officers overnight. It rules out every operational use of a school building — as a camp, a detention facility, a deployment point, or anything else. And the teachers’ exemption is not a promise for the future only: duties already handed out must be withdrawn now.
Why the decision was made: the September closures
The trigger for both decisions was what happened in Islamabad in September.
According to an FDE official quoted by Dawn, 38 public-sector schools and colleges in the capital were closed in September to accommodate police personnel ahead of an anticipated protest march by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The government began shifting police personnel into the educational institutions on 24 September, three days before the party’s scheduled rally.
Thousands of students lost classroom time as a result. Dawn reported that the institutions remained closed for periods ranging from one to three weeks, and that the students “recently suffered educational losses” because of the closures.
The schools and colleges were reopened once the situation came under control and governor’s rule was imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province whose PTI-led government the federal government had accused of disengaging from the fight against militancy. Governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been in place since 11 October.
The September episode was not the first time Islamabad’s schools had been used this way, but it was the one that forced the issue. Closing 38 institutions at once, for as long as three weeks, made the cost visible: thousands of children out of class, in the middle of the school term, so that police officers brought in from elsewhere had somewhere to sleep.
A federal government officer quoted by Dawn welcomed the prime minister’s decision. “Closing schools and colleges to accommodate police personnel was illogical,” the officer said. The same officer added that teachers had been demanding exemption from election, census and other duties for years, “but the prime minister has finally accepted their demand.”
How the closures affected students
The simplest way to understand the decision is to count what was lost in September.
Thirty-eight schools and colleges were shut. Some stayed closed for a week; others for three. The students affected numbered in the thousands, according to Dawn. In a school system, a week of lost classes is not a small thing: lessons are missed, exams are pushed back, and teachers have to rush through the syllabus to catch up.
The disruption falls hardest on students in public schools. Families who send their children to government schools in Islamabad generally cannot afford private alternatives. When a public school closes for three weeks, those children simply do not go to school. There is no backup classroom and no online substitute.
The closures also hit the youngest students hardest. A child in primary school who misses three weeks of lessons loses the thread of reading and arithmetic in a way that is hard to recover. Older students preparing for board examinations lose revision time they cannot get back.
That is the argument the prime minister made in the meeting: schools exist to impart education, and using them for anything else comes at the cost of students’ education. The ban is, in effect, a decision that the next time the capital faces a law and order situation, the authorities will have to find somewhere else to put their personnel.
What the FDE runs in Islamabad
The ban covers a large system. The Federal Directorate of Education oversees 432 schools and colleges in the Islamabad Capital Territory, according to figures given to the National Assembly in May 2025. Of those, 149 are in urban areas and 283 are in the rural parts of the capital.
The FDE’s schools serve more than 243,000 students, from prep classes up to postgraduate level, according to the directorate’s own published figures. It employs more than 9,600 teaching staff.
The 38 institutions closed in September were therefore a small share of the whole system — roughly one in eleven. But they were closed in the middle of a security operation that dominated the capital for weeks, and their closure was felt far beyond their own gates: parents had to make other arrangements, teachers lost teaching days, and the message to the city was that classrooms were available to be taken over whenever the government needed space.
The FDE has had its own problems in recent years. The FDE went without a permanent director general from July 2023 until May 2026, when Javed Iqbal Mirza was appointed after a gap of nearly three years. The vacancy had caused delays in decision-making across the capital’s public schools. Against that background, a clear written order protecting school buildings from other uses is a significant step — but only if it is enforced the next time the pressure comes.
Why teachers have wanted this for years
The second half of the prime minister’s decision — freeing teachers from non-teaching duties — answers a complaint that teachers in Pakistan have raised for decades.
In Pakistan, government schoolteachers are routinely drafted into work that has nothing to do with teaching. During elections, they serve as polling staff, running polling stations and counting votes. During the national census, they go door to door collecting household data. They are also used for vaccination drives, surveys and other government campaigns.
The practice is so established that it is built into how elections and censuses are run: the state relies on teachers because they are educated, they are on the government payroll, and they are present in every town and village. But the cost is paid in the classroom. Every day a teacher spends at a polling station or on a census round is a day their students go without a lesson.
Teachers’ organisations have argued for years that this is a misuse of the teaching workforce. Their point is simple: a teacher’s job is to teach, and the state should hire separate staff for elections and surveys rather than pulling teachers out of schools. The federal government officer quoted by Dawn confirmed that teachers had been demanding the exemption for years.
The prime minister’s order now says teachers “shall not be assigned duties other than teaching under any circumstances.” That is stronger than a promise to reduce the practice. It is a blanket rule, and it comes with an instruction to cancel duties already assigned.
Whether it holds will be tested at the next election or census, when the pressure to draft teachers returns. Election officials have long depended on teachers to staff polling stations, and finding replacements at short notice will not be easy. The test of the order will not be the letter that was sent on Wednesday, but what happens the next time a returning officer asks for a list of teachers.
What happens next
The immediate effect is clear. From now on, no school or college under the FDE in Islamabad may be occupied by a law enforcement agency for any purpose. Teachers in the capital may not be given election, census or survey duties, and any duties already assigned must be withdrawn.
The wider question is whether the rule will be followed when it is inconvenient. Islamabad is the seat of the federal government and the stage for frequent protests, marches and security operations. Police officers brought in from other provinces need accommodation, and large public buildings — schools above all — have always been the easy answer.
The letter has gone to the chief commissioner, the CDA chairman, the inspector general of police, the interior secretary and the FDE director general. All five now have the order in writing, which makes it harder for any one of them to claim they did not know.
The prime minister issued the directives while on a three-day official visit to Türkiye to attend the COP31 climate summit in Antalya. The education ministry’s letter followed on Wednesday, and the decisions were reported on Thursday, 12 November.
For students in Islamabad, the change is straightforward: the next time the city braces for a protest or a security operation, their classrooms should stay open. For teachers, the change is equally direct: their working day should be spent teaching, and nothing else.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly has the prime minister banned?
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has banned police and security personnel from using schools and colleges in Islamabad for accommodation or any other purpose during law and order situations. The ban covers buildings, classrooms and other facilities of institutions run by the Federal Directorate of Education, and it rules out their use as temporary camps, deployment bases or detention facilities.
Are teachers really exempt from election duties now?
Yes, under the prime minister’s directive. Teachers in Islamabad will no longer be assigned election duties, census work, household surveys or other administrative tasks. The education ministry’s letter says duties already assigned to teachers must be cancelled immediately.
Why were Islamabad’s schools closed in September?
Thirty-eight public-sector schools and colleges were closed in September to accommodate police personnel ahead of an anticipated PTI protest march. Police began moving into the institutions on 24 September, three days before the scheduled rally, and some schools stayed closed for up to three weeks.
How many students were affected by the September closures?
Dawn reported that thousands of students suffered educational losses, with their institutions closed for periods ranging from one to three weeks. The FDE oversees 432 schools and colleges in Islamabad serving more than 243,000 students.
Does the ban apply to schools outside Islamabad?
No. The order covers institutions under the Federal Directorate of Education in the Islamabad Capital Territory only. Schools and colleges in the provinces are run by provincial governments, which would need to issue their own orders.
What happens if the police need somewhere to stay during the next protest?
The letter does not say where police personnel should be housed instead. That is now a problem for the Islamabad administration and the police to solve without using school buildings. The prime minister’s position is that the answer cannot come at the cost of students’ education.
Conclusion
The prime minister’s decision is a simple one, and its strength is in its simplicity. Schools are for teaching. Teachers are for teaching. Everything else — housing police officers, running elections, counting households — should be done somewhere else, by someone else.
The September closures showed what happens when that principle is ignored: 38 schools shut, thousands of students out of class for up to three weeks, and a disruption that fell hardest on the families who could least afford it. The letter sent on Wednesday puts the principle in writing, addressed to every official who would need to break it.
Whether the rule survives its first real test — the next protest, the next election, the next census — will say more than the letter itself. For now, Islamabad’s students and teachers have something they have asked for over many years: a written promise that their classrooms belong to them.
Sources
- Dawn — PM bans use of Islamabad schools, colleges for police deployment: https://www.dawn.com/news/2043874/pm-bans-use-of-islamabad-schools-colleges-for-police-deployment
- The Current — PM Shehbaz bans use of Islamabad schools for police deployment, exempts teachers from election duties: https://thecurrent.pk/pm-shehbaz-bans-use-of-islamabad-schools-for-police-deployment-exempts-teachers-from-election-duties/
- ProPakistani — Islamabad Schools and Teachers Get Major Relief: https://propakistani.pk/?p=1116691
- UrduPoint — 432 schools, colleges operating in ICT under FDE: Farah Naz Akbar: https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/432-schools-colleges-operating-in-ict-under-1978248.html
- Federal Directorate of Education — Wikipedia (FDE oversees 432 schools in ICT with over 243,000 students, as of July 2024): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Directorate_of_Education
This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.
