Delhi Government Asks Schools to Not Deploy Teachers for Census Work

In an effort to ensure the smooth functioning of schools in the city, the Delhi government has decided not to deploy school teachers for census work. A circular in this respect has already been issued to school principals.

By Shreya Pareek

October 19, 2015

School teachers in India are often assigned to do non-teaching related work like booth-duty in elections and collecting data for census reports. This is not just waste of a resources but also adversely impacts the school environment.

The Directorate of Education (DoE), Delhi, has sent a circular to schools, asking principals to not assign teachers for census duty till further orders.

Photo: Michael Foley/Flickr

“It has come to the notice that many teachers/ officials have been deputed by various heads of schools to perform Census duty with National Population Register. Many teachers/officials have already joined the respective NPR offices without seeking necessary approval of the concerned Deputy Directors of Education for this duty. The department is already facing acute shortage of teaching staff and their deployment has jeopardized the functioning of the schools badly,” the notice issued by DoE read.

Since Delhi is already facing a shortage of teachers, their deployment for census work will adversely affect the functioning of the schools.

This has been a problem in the past as well.

Many teachers were earlier deployed in Lok Sabha and Delhi elections, which kept them out of their classes for several days.

This did not just lead to delay in completion of syllabus on time but many educationists also linked this to the mass-failure of students in ninth and eleventh grades in April 2015.

In 2007, Supreme Court had ruled that government school teachers cannot be forced to undertake non-academic activities like election duties, census work or polio drop campaigns.

The new announcement is expected to give much needed relief to the teachers who are overloaded with work during such events and are forced to skip classes to fulfill non-teaching related duties.

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