Students schemes, tree plantation and blood donation to census, poll duty — what’s keeping teachers busy

Take, for example, the case of G. Yashoda, a teacher with over a decade’s experience in teaching at rural schools in Tamil Nadu, who has been asked to coordinate students' participation at a state-level tree plantation drive this month, record the event on her mobile phone and prepare a presentation on the same.

"Some parents show interest in such activities that are organised every other month, but some don’t. This month, we were asked to ensure every student plants a sapling at school or in an open space in the village. We need to take a photo of the sapling being planted by each student, make sure parents are visible in the photo, and prepare a presentation with pictures of all 50 students. These types of activities disrupt our regular teaching schedule,” said Yashoda.

She added: “Sometimes, we are unable to spend time on lessons that require practical learning. Since we are already burdened with non-academic tasks, we are forced to rely on blackboard teaching methods just to complete the syllabus.”

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While teachers across public and private schools are walking a tightrope between academic and co-curricular responsibilities, those working in government and government-aided schools face an even greater burden, including participation in state schemes, ensuring their implementation, and handling other administrative and government-imposed duties.

Education for All in India, an online platform “advancing universal school education in India” in a report titled “Are school teachers in India burdened”, listed extra-curricular activities, engagement in elections, census work, government surveys, maintaining student records, ordering supplies and student supervision, as some of the non-teaching activities in which teachers are involved. Teachers are also involved in monitoring the mid-day meal scheme for students, administering nutritional supplements to the students and ensuring that they are able to access government schemes meant for their benefit.

Answering a question raised in Rajya Sabha in 2022, the then minister of state (MoS), education, had reportedly clarified that the New Education Policy (NEP), 2020, stated that “to prevent the large amounts of time spent currently by teachers on non-teaching activities, teachers will not be engaged any longer in work that is not directly related to teaching; teachers will not be involved in strenuous administrative tasks and more than a rationalised minimum time for mid-day meal related work, so that they may fully concentrate on their teaching-learning duties”.

A 2019 report by the National Institute of Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA) titled ‘Involvement of Teachers in Non-teaching Activities and its Effect on Education’ found that only 19.1 per cent of the annual school hours of a teacher were spent on teaching. In comparison, 42.6 per cent was spent on “non-teaching core activities”, 31.8 per cent on “non-teaching school-related activities” and another 6.5 per cent on “other department activities”. Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Odisha and Uttarakhand were the states covered under the report.

Recent events would bear testimony to these findings.

Last month, a notification issued by the office of the director of primary education in Gujarat directed school timings to be changed on September 17, the birthday of PM Modi, to enable teachers and students to volunteer at blood donation camps across districts.

During the prime minister’s rally in Nikol, Ahmedabad, in August, each government school in the area was asked to send at least ten teachers mandatorily to attend the event.

According to reports, a comprehensive calendar covering educational, extracurricular, and administrative tasks for teachers released by the Maharashtra government for the 2025-26 academic year had unions and associations expressing concern over the heavy "non-academic" workload on teachers, which could likely compromise time for actual classroom teaching. The calendar, reports claimed, required teachers to undertake around 15 non-teaching tasks every month, in addition to their regular teaching responsibilities, which included uploading student data, coordinating government initiatives, and performing administrative duties.

“NGOs working in Maharashtra also often seek student-related data from government schools. We are required to provide this on their mobile apps, which is an extremely painstaking job,” said Dilip Chaudhary, a teacher at a government school in Maharashtra’s Dharashiv. “Ahead of elections, we are deputed as booth-level officers (BLOs), a task that involves the strenuous process of updating voters’ lists and attending a series of official meetings,” he added. The burden of non-academic responsibilities eats into the teaching time, creating a disconnect between teachers and students, Chaudhary rued.

For Nilesh Nannawre, a government school teacher in Maharashtra’s Ramtek, a big challenge facing teachers was record-keeping. “Whether it is school attendance or the mid-day meal scheme, we have to maintain both offline and online records. For instance, the daily record of the mid-day meal has to include the ingredients consumed per student each day. This must be sent to the authorities daily, while monthly data is compiled separately and submitted to higher officials,” he explained. According to Nannawre’s estimate, government school teachers in India are currently engaged in at least 23 different non-academic activities, in addition to their teaching duties.

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Beyond the impact on teaching, this, at times, even takes a toll on their personal time.

A case in point is the ongoing Social and Educational Survey in Karnataka. Schools in the state were scheduled to close for the Dasara (Dussehra) holidays between September 20 and October 7. However, teachers have been roped in for the survey during this period. Across the state, an estimated 1.5 lakh teachers are being used for the Social and Education Survey.

A government school teacher from Karnataka’s Anekal taluk, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “Whether it is census work or election work, it is an additional responsibility for teachers. For this census work [survey], it is said that Rs 100 per house has been fixed [as compensation to the teachers]. Each teacher may get Rs 20,000. But since the work has been scheduled during holidays, we would not be able to spend time with our families.”

According to Karnataka government data, of 365 days in the 2025–26 academic year, 123 are holidays. During the remaining 242 days, teachers, in addition to their academic work, have to monitor the execution of the state government’s Ksheera Bhagya (milk distribution) scheme for school children, mid-day meals, egg and banana distribution and ragi distribution to students. At the beginning of the academic year, teachers are also responsible for the distribution of school uniforms, shoes and socks and textbooks.

M Madhusudhana Rao, headmaster of a school in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district, resigned from his position in June this year, allegedly owing to the administrative burden and non-academic duties imposed on him for the past four to five years, which he claimed interfered with his work of providing education to students from the poorer sections of society. Submitting his resignation to the commissioner of school education in June, Rao expressed disappointment with the state of the public education system in the country, claiming that the focus for school teachers had shifted from academics to government imposed auxiliary tasks that robbed the teacher valuable time which he would otherwise have spent in the classroom.

Interestingly, as early as 2022, the then YSR Congress government in the state had asked the education department to exempt teachers from non-academic duties. But the idea appears to have remained on paper.

“Teachers have to monitor whether the students are wearing the shoes and socks given by the government. They have to ensure that parents of the children follow the YouTube channel run by the department,” said G Hrudaya Raju, president of the Andhra Pradesh Teachers Federation (APTF).

The situation is not much different in neighghbouring Telangana, where retired teacher Raghuram Prasad claimed the burden of non-academic work on teachers, not only increased stress for them, but also diluted their focus on teaching. Another retired teacher, Girija Paidimarri, feared the impact of this on the learning outcome of students.

The problem becomes further aggravated when schools are working with vacancies in teaching and non-teaching roles.

In April this year, State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) officials said the Delhi government would train teachers in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to unburden them from non-teaching work. The idea, however, remains on paper as yet, as teachers in Delhi government schools allege that the majority of their work is of a non-teaching nature. “One reason for this is that Delhi government schools are short of clerical staff, and that work is being done by teachers,” claimed Ajay Veer Yadav, general secretary of the Government School Teachers Association (GSTA).

In West Bengal, according to government data, 5530 teaching posts were lying vacat at the elementary school level, 33,369 at the secondary level and 38,899 at the senior secondary level. Despite the resulting burden on the available staff, teachers in the state, in addition to other common non-academic duties, had to monitor the

Implementation of the state’s student-centric welfare schemes. "Teachers are required to fill out forms for eligible student beneficiaries, collect their Aadhaar cards and other necessary documents, link their bank accounts, and, in cases where students do not have accounts, take on the additional responsibility of helping them open one," pointed out Altaf Ahmed, assistant secretary of the Sagacious Teachers and Employees Association.

Often, teachers at these schools find themselves subjected to the whims and fancies of the ruling dispensation.

In Delhi, “The [former] Aam Aadmi Party government had introduced subjects like Deshbhakti programme, Happiness Curriculum and Entrepreneurship Mindset. Now, the [current] BJP government has replaced these with Rashtraneeti, Science of Living, and New Era of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem & Vision (NEEEV). If we keep training for and teaching these courses, when will we be able to teach our core subjects?,” wondered a Sanskrit teacher at a government school in the national capital’s RK Puram area, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to APTF’s Hrudaya Raju, teachers are constantly “living in fear” of actions by higher officials. “We are focusing more on tasks that satisfy officials than on teaching. This has become the reason for the decline and backwardness of education in Andhra Pradesh government schools,” he alleged.

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The plight of teachers has not gone unnoticed, or in some cases, unopposed by them.

In 2024, the Allahabad High Court  while deciding a case of a teacher's witheld payment, had reportedly observed that teachers couldn’t be made to do non-academic work. It had clarified, however, that teachers “can only be employed during disasters, the Census, and general elections” in non-academic work.

J. Robert, general secretary of Tamil Nadu’s Secondary Grade Seniority Teachers' Association, said they had recently met with education department officials to explain how “non-academic tasks interfere with our academic work, which in turn affects the students' learning”. According to him, the school education department had agreed to relieve teachers from conducting health surveys starting next year.

The Federal has reached Sanjay Kumar, secretary, Union department of school education  and literacy, for response on the issue of non-academic work assigned to teachers. The report will be updated once a response is received.

Meanwhile, Yashodha is on a tight schedule, trying to balance her academic and non-academic duties. “We have to spend at least two hours every day on non-academic work," the teacher said of a regular day at school.