Page 20 - EducationWorld Oct. 2022

Education News

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education. According to rin i - Teachers attribute
v a s a n S rira m , principal of the declining learning out-
high-ranked The Mann School, comes of children in
Delhi, the DMVS initiative is government schools to
conceptually sound but it has teachers being assigned
a “lot of loose ends”. “Whether a spate of ‘official’ duties
DMVS will address the short- outside the classroom
comings of NIOS, is a question which takes away much
that needs to be answered. of their teaching time.
Moreover, it is silent about the According to govern-
social and emotional education ment school teachers’
of children. This is a digital spokespersons, they are
technologies driven project obliged to discharge 150
and it’s not clear to what extent non-teaching admin-
teachers have been trained to istrative duties within
deliver online lectures effec- Aurangabad teachers protest: right to teach demand schools and beyond
tively,” says Sriram. school gates. These as-
With the Gujarat and Karnataka their HRA, have reportedly briefed signments include preparing chil-
assembly elections round the corner lawyers to contest this government dren’s mid-day meals, maintaining
and AAP emerging as a strong directive. accounts of foodgrains distributed
contender, its K-12 education-driven The prime cause of the impugned by government to schools, collecting
campaign will be put to test. If it suc- directives is widespread belief that funds for locally sponsored school
ceeds, education is certain to move highly paid government school teach- development projects, submitting re-
higher up on the national develop- ers — their Pay Commission stipulated ports and updating data required by
ment agenda. remuneration is often 20-30 multiples several administrative departments.
Autar Nehru (Delhi) of teachers in private, especially pri- Moreover, since July the state’s teach-
vate budget schools — practice mass ers have been assigned the additional
MAHARASHTRA truancy. Way back in 1998, a PR O BE duty of registering children for their
Collateral damage (P eop le’ s R ep ort on Basic Educ ation) Aadhar unique identification cards on
the education ministry’s online plat-
survey shocked the nation by stating
that 25 percent of government school form.
RIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS IN Ma- teachers nationwide are absent from n addition, teachers are routinely
harashtra’s 65,734 govern- school every day. Igiven assignments to conduct health,
Pment-run z illa p arishad (ZP) This widely cited report was sup- animal husbandry, population con-
rural schools are simmering with an- ported in 2005 by the US-based trol drives, door-to-door anti-tobacco
ger. The state government’s education Ithaka think tank’s J U S TO R R ep ort awareness campaigns, administer po-
ministry has directed all teachers to whose authors included Nazmul lio vaccine doses, survey the number
display A4 size photographs of them- Chaudhury, a World Bank economist of public toilets, check open defeca-
selves in their classrooms. Addition- and Kartik Murlidharan, a doctorate tion behaviour in villages and even
ally, Prashant Bamb, a member of the scholar at Harvard University and regulate queues outside liquor shops.
legislative assembly (MLA) of the rul- currently professor of economics at During the Covid pandemic lockdown,
ing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has the University of California, San Di- over 300 teachers statewide who were
demanded that the house rent allow- ego (UCSD). “Twenty-five percent of assigned pandemic-related duties lost
ance (HRA) of zilla parishad teachers teachers were absent from school, and their lives. Moreover during general
who fail to provide proof of residence only about half were teaching during and state elections, teachers are as-
in the same village as their school, be unannounced visits to a nationally signed booth management and regu-
withheld. representative sample of government lation duties.
On Teachers Day (September 5) ZP primary schools in India. Absence These extra-curricular duties are
teachers wore black arm bands to pro- rates varied from 15 percent in Maha- routinely assigned to teachers despite
test this government directive and on rashtra to 42 percent in Jharkhand, s.27 of the Right of Children to Free
September 11, a large contingent of ZP with higher rates concentrated in the & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act,
teachers from across the state staged a poorer states,” wrote the authors of 2009, stating “no teacher shall be de-
protest at Aurangabad. Moreover sev- the report published in the J ournal of ployed for any non-educational pur-
eral teachers, who were issued notices the Europ ean Ec onomic A ssoc iation poses other than the decennial popu-
to submit proof of residence or forgo (April-May, 2005). lation census, disaster relief duties or

20 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2022