Open Forum

New Delhi, 10 November 2016

School Teachers Burden

MORE SOCIAL, LESS ACADEMIC

By Dr.S.Saraswathi

(Former Director, ICSSR, New Delhi)

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has issued a circular asking its 1800 schools including 210 abroad to refrain from assigning non-academic work to teachers. Whereby, any activity other than those related to teaching, professional enhancement, examinations and evaluation are listed as non-academic.

Importantly, this instruction applies also to private schools affiliated to it to ensure that teachers are not saddled with non-teaching work. They have to maintain separate staff for teaching, non-teaching and administrative work. Besides, the new rules also relieved teachers from the “duty” of accompanying students in buses.

Undeniably, this circular is confirmation of Section 27 of the RTE Act which states: “No teacher shall be deployed for any non-educational purposes other than decennial population census, disaster relief duties and those relating to elections to local authority, State legislatures or Parliament as the case may be”. 

Pertinently, the necessity for issuing this circular rose because of some cases of   violations of guidelines of many State Governments and not the RTE Act.

The circular follows a Supreme Court judgment in a case relating to appointment of 32 teachers in Telengana and Andhra Pradesh as private secretaries to MLAs September last. The Court held that engaging school teachers and university professors for non-academic work was unconstitutional.  

This comes in the backdrop of complaints that private schools were engaging teachers in various non-teaching tasks like collecting fees and maintaining accounts, keeping watch over children during lunch recess, accompanying students in buses etc lately.

True, a school teacher’s job is not attractive as the salaries are low and perks unknown.  This is made positively unattractive thanks to numerous non-teaching work promises extracted from them under and outside the conditions of appointment.

There is also tremendous increase in parents and community expectations from teachers for education and welfare of their wards to enable them succeed in the highly competitive school world.

Unfortunately, our education policies have put many non-academic work- loads on teachers in many States. Some of these are results of expansion in education and the urgent need to create and sustain social conditions to facilitate realization of “education for all”. 

Some are due to failure on the part of concerned authorities outside schools like the public transport system, traffic police et al to manage their work and the tendency to drag teaching staff where students are concerned.

Further, the circular seems to have special reference to teachers’ role in the Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDM) implemented in schools across the country.  The scheme is as important as learning in schools having pupils predominantly from low-income groups.

For instance the 2013 Maharashtra Government’s guidelines contained a provision that head-masters or senior teachers should visit central kitchens where food was prepared in urban areas to ensure hygienic preparation.  Teachers were also supposed to taste the food before it was served to children every day. 

The Bombay High Court rejected this guideline on the ground that the task had nothing to do with education and the academic staff could not be burdened with non-academic work. It directed the State Government to create an independent authority for the purpose.

In Bihar too, a directive from the Inspector of Schools in 2013 entrusted the task of periodical supervision of food preparation with school principals and scrapped the earlier system of engaging NGOs in the task.  

This order was challenged by a PIL in the Allahabad High Court which underscored that the head-masters and teachers duty was to teach students, not to supervise cooking meals. In fact, teachers then strongly protested to the directive by boycotting MDM duties.

In Himachal Pradesh one teacher in every school was given the duty to look after collection and consumption of food grains, management of gas, maintenance of registers etc. Surely, full-time non-teaching work for the teacher!

Haryana established the non-academic role of teachers by an order: “All teachers have to play a more proactive role in terms of supervising the meals by ensuring that children come in line, wash their hands, seated on mats, served adequately and wash up and return to class.  A roster should be set up for teachers to take charge of the whole process on each day”.

In Arunachal Pradesh actual implementation of the MDM Scheme was done in the schools and the responsibility rested with the School Management Committee along with the head-master.

On the contrary, the Odisha Government distinguished teaching work as ‘academic’ and stated in its guidelines for operation of the MDM Scheme, “teachers should not be assigned the responsibility that will impede or interfere with teaching/learning.  On no account, should the head-master or teachers be involved in the procurement, cooking, or implementation of the MDM Programme”.

However, they have to monitor the programme to ensure proper quality and quantity of food, its hygienic preparation, keeping away stray animals,  prominent  display of entitlement and  periodic health check-up of cooks and helpers. They also need to taste the food for quality before it is served to students. 

Tamil Nadu, known as the pioneer of Noon-Meal Scheme in schools has a good administrative set up for implementing the scheme without dragging teachers. In fact, the HRD Ministry and Department of School Education and Literacy’s joint review conducted in 2013 remarked that active participation of head-masters and teachers in planning, implementation, and monitoring of the programme was very poor. 

The review report avowed that the Government should advise all teachers to play an active role for smooth implementation of the Noon-Meal Programme.

This advice is now irrelevant in the light of the Supreme Court verdict   that wants teachers to concentrate on academic work the reason which they are appointed. 

Significantly, a school lunch programme is common in almost all developed countries to enhance the nutritional standard of the school-age population, unlike India where it is a strategy to encourage schooling and counter hunger and malnutrition.

If teachers are involved in Finland or Sweden it is for combining the pedagogical role of caterers and teachers knowledge of nutrition. The Indian system has to address local social problems.

Teachers are already involved in several activities: Promoting skills, character building, cultivating good habits and moral values. They have to encourage hobbies and sports as part of learning.  Additionally, academic counselling is an indispensable part of their duties.

Currently, educational institutions are big promoters of cultural activities attracting interested students and teachers in a big way.  How much of it has educational content is open to question, but their usefulness in creating community spirit and providing a healthy break between serious academic work cannot be ignored.

However, the age-old practice of engaging teachers in organizing purely entertainment programmes and selling tickets come under non-academic work which cannot be allowed.

Clearly, non-teaching social responsibility placed on teachers is burdensome.  Unless this is decreased as per the Supreme Court order, teachers might not find time to enhance their knowledge and skills wherein students would have to depend on private coaching to learn their lessons. ----- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)