Editorial: Hey, leave the teacher alone

This has been a hectic time for schoolteachers with the Union government drafting them for its work like the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, census enumeration and the conduct of elections. This being the peak exam season and a torrid summer, that’s quite an extra workload in addition to regular teaching.

While SIR and the elections are over, the summer isn’t, and the delayed Census promises to keep teachers busy for months more. From now till September, they will double as door-to-door enumerators for the houselisting phase of the survey, and then in February 2027 for the population enumeration phase, each phase entailing training and field work for 30-35 days.

In addition to this mandatory work, the government, from time to time, enlists teachers to promote its special initiatives. It is this headload that has been getting heavier. In the past six months, such activities have included the Jal Pakhwada 2026, a 15-day programme in April on water conservation that required teachers to visit local areas and create awareness about the Jal Shakti Abhiyan; organising quiz programmes on Operation Sindoor (January); celebration of Veer Baal Divas (December) by making students write essays and poems on Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Digital India, etc; and the Janjatiya Gaurav Pakhwada (November), which involved organising special activities to celebrate India’s tribal identity.

All this work is extra-numerary to activities that school boards mandate as part of the curriculum. Even if they involve no field visits and are conducted within campus, these programmes require teachers to organise special activities by students, providing materials for them, grading them and writing up reports on them. As proof of obedience, they are required to upload videos and pictures of the events to a mandated portal. While the themes of these schemes may be laudable, such as public health and social awareness, they do not organically complement the curriculum, being propaganda add-ons with little actual learning value.

Under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, it is not permissible to use teachers for non-educational tasks such as propagating government promotional messages. Section 27 of the Act explicitly prohibits deployment of teachers for non-educational purposes except for three specific tasks: the census, disaster relief duties, and election work. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled against teachers being roped in for non-academic work, and the National Education Policy 2020 emphasizes that teachers should not be involved in work not directly related to teaching.

Even if it be argued that these special activities are educational in nature, such as essay writing on tribal culture or public hygiene, they bring a lot of administrative and data entry work upon teachers that eats into their teaching time and interferes with the normal curriculum. The RTE Act strictly defines the workload of teachers. It mandates a minimum of 45 working hours per week, divided into instructional hours and preparation hours to ensure that the focus is on instructional quality.

By heaping ‘special activity’ workload on teachers, the government is failing to realise that the teacher’s work involves more than delivering instruction and grading performance. A lot of invisible work goes into teaching, like creating lesson plans, developing teaching materials, and designing worksheets. It also involves work of great social value, like mentorship, monitoring student behaviour and attending to students who need extra help. It is that precious contribution that is compromised when a teacher is asked to double up as a propagandist.