A teacher may be assigned to election duty, Census work, surveys, verification drives or other government responsibilities for a few days.
A call to protect classroom learning while fulfilling essential public duties
A teacher may be assigned to election duty, Census work, surveys, verification drives or other government responsibilities for a few days. Such assignments are undoubtedly important to the functioning of government and public administration. Teachers have traditionally extended their cooperation whenever called upon.
But there is a question that deserves serious consideration: when teachers are taken away from classrooms, who makes up for the learning time lost by children?
For a child, every day of classroom learning matters. A missed lesson may appear insignificant for a day or two, but repeated interruptions can gradually create learning gaps that are difficult to identify and even harder to bridge.
The concern is particularly significant in schools that are already functioning with limited teaching staff. When several teachers from the same school are assigned to official duties at the same time, the impact is felt immediately. The teachers who remain are required to handle additional classes, while students receive less individual attention and valuable instructional time is lost.
The situation becomes even more serious when teachers of core subjects such as Mathematics and Science are assigned to non-teaching duties, particularly when examinations are approaching.
Mathematics and Science require continuous classroom engagement, practice, explanation and doubt-clearing. Students need their subject teachers not only to complete the syllabus but also to clarify difficult concepts, solve problems, conduct revision and prepare them for examinations. When such teachers are absent for several days at a crucial stage of the academic year, the consequences can be significant.
This raises a simple but important question: When the Mathematics or Science teacher is taken away from the classroom and examinations are at hand, who suffers? The answer is clear—the students.
They may lose valuable opportunities to ask questions, practice difficult topics, complete portions of the syllabus and receive the guidance they need before examinations. The burden is then placed on the remaining teachers, who are already managing additional classes and responsibilities.
Teachers understand that government duties are necessary. They are public servants and have always contributed to important government programmes. The issue, therefore, is not about refusing public duty. It is about finding a reasonable balance between administrative requirements and the educational needs of children.
Every day a teacher spends away from the classroom has an educational cost. That cost may not immediately appear in official records, but it can be seen in unfinished portions of the syllabus, reduced revision time, unanswered questions, weaker preparation and learning gaps that may emerge much later.
A Question Worth Asking
Are we addressing today's administrative requirements while unintentionally creating tomorrow's learning gaps?
This does not mean that teachers should never be assigned government duties. Rather, it calls for greater consideration of the academic calendar and the actual staffing position of individual schools while making such deployments.
Where possible, alternative arrangements could be considered, particularly during examination periods or when the deployment of a teacher would leave a school without a subject teacher for a core subject.
A few days of administrative duty may be necessary. But for a child, those same few days may represent several lessons, hours of practice and opportunities to understand something that may never be fully recovered. The classroom is where the consequences are ultimately felt.
Our humble appeal to the concerned authorities and policymakers is therefore to consider the classroom impact before deploying teachers for non-teaching duties, especially during critical academic periods. Public responsibilities must certainly be fulfilled, but they should be fulfilled in a manner that safeguards the learning of children.
Because the question is not simply about where a teacher is deployed for a few days. The larger question is: what happens to the child sitting in the classroom during those days?
Our concern is not merely about today's workload. It is about protecting the learning—and ultimately the future—of our children.
Kekhrielenuo Pienyii
A Concerned Government Teacher
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and are intended to highlight concerns regarding the impact of assigning teachers to non-teaching duties on classroom learning. They do not represent the official position of any school, department, organisation or government authority.