Srinagar, Apr 5: The continued assignment of non-teaching duties to school teachers in Jammu and Kashmir has raised serious concerns, with students in government schools increasingly bearing the consequences of disrupted classroom learning.
Despite facing challenges in rationalisation of the teaching staff and ensuring adequate teachers in schools as per the requirement of the students, the government school teachers are assigned census duty besides handling the role of Booth Level Officers (BLOs).
The issue was also raised in the budget session of the J&K Legislative Assembly, where a ruling party legislator informed the House that the teachers remain away from their schools to deliver their non-teaching assignments.
“This is not a good practice as the students have been left at the receiving end because the teachers remain away from their schools,” the NC legislator said.
He said the issue was raised with the Secretary of the School Education Department (SED), and the department said the teachers were supposed to work on their additional assignment (BLO and Census duty) after school hours.
“But the teachers remain away from school during working hours under the guise of this additional assignment,” he said.
Another MLA said that some schools were run by single teachers who are already overburdened with office assignments.
“A single teacher has to manage MDM besides doing the job of BLO and also deliver his census duty. The same teacher has to report to the ZEO as well,” the MLA said in the Assembly.
Meanwhile, the teachers said the government was assigning this duty mostly to the teachers posted in primary and middle schools which are already facing dearth of teaching staff.
“Even if it is necessary to assign this duty to only teachers, but then the government should pick teachers from high and higher secondary schools which have adequate staff available,” a group of teachers told Greater Kashmir.
This newspaper has carried a series of stories about the issue and highlighted the plight of the students in government schools who are deprived of quality education as the teachers remain busy with the additional assignment.
In past, the government claimed to do away with the practice, but the policy did not witness any change on the ground.
The deployment of teachers for non-teaching assignments continues even if it costs the daily academics of the students. A top official said the education department is not taken into confidence before assigning these duties to the teachers.
“The government seeks the list of employees, and the concerned Deputy Commissioners decide on it. We are already facing a dearth of teaching staff in schools, but the government still overburden our teachers,” the official said.
“We are against it because we do not want our teachers to be assigned such non-teaching jobs, but perhaps our teachers remain ready for every assignment,” he said.
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