Bhutan Teacher Resignations: The Year the Pay Rise Didn't Work

In 2023 Bhutan gave its teachers a pay rise of 55 to 74 percent — the largest in the history of its civil service — and lifted the teaching allowance from 35% to 50%. It was a deliberate, expensive answer to a visible problem.

The next year, 1,193 teachers resigned. A record.

The cumulative arithmetic is the part that reshapes the system: across 2020–2025, 5,516 teachers resigned against 3,619 recruited — a net loss of 1,897, and the teaching force shrank about 10% in eighteen months to 9,484 by mid-2025. The losses concentrate where they hurt most: attrition near 12.5% in higher secondary and 15.8% among female teachers, so a national 15:1 pupil-teacher ratio conceals acute subject shortages.

The clean reading of this chart is that the comparison driving the decision is not Bhutanese pay before versus after. It is what a Bhutanese salary buys against what an Australian one buys — which is why a raise, however large, did not hold. The full picture, including the second emptying now arriving from the birth rate, is The Classroom That Emptied Twice.