Karnataka burdens its teachers with new duty: Controlling stray dogs

While they are already burdened by responsibilities not related to teaching, including providing hot meals to students and engaging in caste census and election duties, teachers in Karnataka’s government schools have been assigned a new duty – controlling stray dogs in school premises.

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The development has come after the Supreme Court on November 7 issues a suo motu writ petition after taking a serious note of the growing instances of dog attacks on students in school premises. It asked the states and Union Territories to take measures against the menace. The judgment clearly meant that the responsibility to control the canines should be taken by local bodies, including the city corporation, municipality or gram panchayat.

Subsequently, under the guidelines issued by Karnataka’s school education department on November 28, the responsibility to supervise and coordinate the anti-stray dogs work has been placed on the administrative head of the schools. By means of asking the headmaster, principal or senior associate teacher to be appointed as ‘nodal officers’ in the operation, the teachers themselves have become responsible indirectly.

Teachers to identify dogs, secure premises and hold meetings

As per the new circular of the state government, it is the duty of the teachers to identify and count the number of dogs in the school premises. They have to inform local bodies about the identified dogs and make arrangements to shift them to shelters. In addition, they have been given the responsibility of ensuring the construction of a secure compound to prevent dogs from entering the school premises and to hold meetings every 15 days and submit a report on all these processes.

Burden of non-teaching work upsets teachers

The added responsibility of controlling the canines has made things challenging for the teachers, who are already under stress. Besides their routine academic work, they are carrying out additional tasks such as managing the hot meal scheme, caste census, election duty and data entry for various government schemes. The new addition to their list of responsibilities has left them frustrated and anxious.

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D Shashi Kumar, general secretary of the Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools of Karnataka, told The Federal, “Our basic duty is to provide quality education to children. But now counting dogs, calling meetings and writing reports is becoming our main job. If local bodies do not cooperate, the mistake will ultimately come back to us.”

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The directive from the civic authorities to the educational institutions to keep a watch on stray dogs on their premises has also irked the private schools’ bodies, who have alleged that the civic authorities were trying to shun their responsibilities and leave the schools overwhelmed. It has also been said that adding to the burden of non-teaching work could seriously impact the quality of education.

(The article was first published in The Federal Karnataka)