When we hear the word teacher, we generally imagine a person standing in a class full of students, writing something on the blackboard. It is generally assumed that explaining the concepts of a subject is the only responsibility of a teacher. But, in the real world teachers perform a lot of other responsibilities outside the classroom. Some may need to be kept around, but a lot of them can be eliminated by the policy makers.
1. Maintaining Records
Teachers are expected to list out their lesson plans at the start of each year and submit it in the school records. They are also expected to maintain a daily record of the content they taught in each class. In addition to this, teachers are also expected to maintain attendance records and exam results.
2. Government Reporting
Complying with government policies is a big part of a teacher’s day-to-day life. Policies keep changing at the state and central level. Teachers are tasked with implementing the schemes and creating reports for the work done at the ground level. A lot of government schools are trying to digitize the process. This is another humongous obstacle because of lack of computer literacy among the teachers.
3. Examinations
As an outsider, one would think “Hey, exams are part of the school system. Why would it be an administrative burden?”. Well, an exam has a lot of parts. As a teacher, setting the question paper and checking answer sheets could be labeled as being “part of the job”.
But, organizing the examination is managerial work and it has nothing to do with teaching students. In every school, there are a group of teachers who are tasked with the responsibility of organizing the exams. The to-do list looks like this:
- Create a schedule of the exam
- Assign rooms for each class
- Decide and assign invigilation duties
- Collect question papers from teachers (or the police headquarters for board exams)
- Collecting the answer sheets and delivering them to the subject teacher.
- For board exams, compile the result from the board’s website.
These tasks have nothing to do with teaching. On top of this, teachers are expected to check board exam answer sheets. This too is an annual exam related task for a lot of teachers.
4. Election Duties
Teachers are election officers in this country. There are state, central and municipal elections happening every few years. Teachers are responsible for attending election training and then conducting the elections on election day.
5. Census & Public Health Drives
All government outreach programmes are conducted by teachers. Some examples are:
Census: Teachers are assigned an area and they visit each house one-by-one collecting details of each family member. They do manual entry in registers which they have to carry with them in the scorching heat of India.
Medical Surveys: For a long time teachers were also involved in health related drives like Polio vaccinations. Nowadays, the Anganwadi teams take care of such work. Still, teachers are called up when any door-to-door work needs to be done. During Covid, a lot of teachers were made to sit outside quarantine zones with a security guard. They were tasked with ensuring that the people stayed in their homes.
6. Cultural Activities
In the Indian education system, sports, arts and dance are an afterthought. Schools, especially government schools, don't have specialized arts and dance teachers. So, when the time comes to organize cultural events, female teachers are called up to get the children ready in some way. Teachers have to spend their free time finding students and getting them to prepare some kind of drama or dance program. Again, similar to examinations, they have to put on their managerial hats and ensure that the entire event goes smoothly.
7. Infrastructure Management
Some government schools lack the most basic form of infrastructure. Classes are unclean, ceilings leak during rains and unavailability of books are some of the infrastructural problems. One would think that teachers would just come in the class and teach their lesson. But, no. They have to face these problems and find workarounds, so that they can do their primary job.
Conclusion
Teachers in India don’t just teach. As shown by the points above, they perform a lot of other duties as well. On top of this, they don’t get paid well, neither for the teaching work nor for the extra work that they do. Imagine joining the teaching profession thinking you will change the lives of children with knowledge. But, you end up doing everything else except the teaching work. And then we wonder, why does no one deliberately take up the teaching profession? Why is India lagging behind in the field of education? This post tried to answer this question by highlighting some of the problems that teachers face.
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