Obstacles Faced by Zilla Parishad Teachers

आचार्य विनोबा शिक्षक सहायक कार्यक्रम – Reducing paper workload for teachers, building portfolio for schools and teachers.

Teachers in government schools often lament that a very large part of their time goes into paperwork. We visited a few schools in Pune and met with teachers. We also saw the registers and reports to understand – the reason behind the paperwork.

Too Many Stakeholders

Teacher in a government school has many bosses. At a very high level, there are two main agencies (apart from other smaller agencies)

(a) there is the education department – which provide guidance on the syllabus, teacher training etc. (b), and there is the Zilla Parishad/ Corporation – which owns the school buildings – and pay for the teacher salaries.

In their zeal to do good, they often announce programs like Cleanliness month, Amrit Mahotsav, PM Birthday, 100 days reading campaign etc... Teachers are then asked to run these programs in their school and provide proof of having done it. There are some prizes and recognition. However, these programs are ad hoc and increase the load on the teachers.

Then there are other regular programs – like monthly teacher training, School management committee etc... Then there are school visits by the functionaries.

Each of these visits takes away class time from the teacher.

Unrelated Work

Often unrelated work like – making aadhar cards for students, caste certificates for students, panchnama for flood-affected victims, maintaining the voting list for the village, census, book distribution etc., lands up with the teachers.

Why does this happen? Because teachers report to the Zilla Parishad/ Corporation – tasks emanating from the Social Development department in these areas – require human resources – which have not been provided for. In such cases – the job lands on the teacher's desk.

Paper Work

The teachers in the government school have to do all the paperwork – which an accountant department in the office would do. So all data related to money grants received and spent, mid-day meal scheme, social categorization of students, details about infrastructure, attendance allowance for SC/ST girls, book distribution etc.. is maintained by the teachers.

Since there are many bosses – each of them may ask for the same data many times – differently.

To sum it all up, India is also coping with a situation where there are a lot of teacher openings, which can be as high as 60% to 70% in some states. In government schools, professional development for teachers is highly underdeveloped. Guest or ad hoc teachers fill about half of the regular teaching openings. Nearly 95% of teacher education is provided privately, most of which is of poor quality. In these schools, there is a very high teacher absenteeism rate. They defraud the government and neglect to carry out their obligations as instructors despite being given considerably higher pay than the teachers in private schools. Sadly, nothing is being done to stop this.

The big realization is that - government schools are large social development organizations. There is the famous mid-day meal scheme, free distribution of books and uniforms for the needy, scholarships and attendance allowance for the backward category students, support for children with handicaps & special needs etc.

All these programs need data - to create a plan and budget, for distribution, for accounting and for periodical reporting. Just in Pune Zilla Parishad, there are over 3,600 schools and over 2 lac students. This regular activity throughout the year – is a massive logistical exercise. It requires a sound information system for data collection, planning and reporting.

All these are small – but all of these together consume substantial time from a teacher's work day.

To improve the quality of education - the Vinoba app provides tools and community development for – teacher support, teacher engagement and teacher motivation. One of the aspects is reducing the data collection workload on teachers – through better templates and reporting. This also helps the cluster heads and blockheads to get good and clean data with less effort. It is estimated that each teacher will save about 10 hours a month from this implementation. The periodic recording of the school events and processes also helps to create a portfolio for the students, teachers and the school.

tickLinks wants to make these lively communities by fostering contact in such school clusters. With the aid of tickLinks, a network of educators can collaborate on projects, learn from one another's efforts, and develop their professional portfolios. By assisting them and providing them with the appropriate tools, such as lesson plans that are matched to the curriculum and more, for maximum student engagement, we work to implement the NEP, 21st Century Education, in order to develop teachers who are prepared for the modern classroom. Programs at different levels are used to thank teachers for their accomplishments monthly, quarterly, and annually. Students may be enrolled in clubs and competitions. Portfolios for students and teachers can be used to document and present learning.