Teachers rue poll duty, seek changes in RTE Act

In the first week of April, she had to get up as early as 4 am to prepare food and do other household chores. “I complete all that by 7 am. Then I have to take a bus and then a share auto to reach the evaluation centre,” she said.

This stands in stark contrast to her typical school day, when she has to get up only by 7 am, finish the chores, and reach the school, which is nearby, by 9.30 am. “In the last few days, I didn’t have time to even take care of my children at home, as I had continuous evaluation work and also training programme for poll duty,”Parameshwari added.

She is one among the one lakh teachers in the State who are facing the task of having to balance evaluation and poll work.

Whether it is Lok Sabha or Assembly polls, election time is hard on these teachers, who have to sacrifice the summer vacation for these tasks. “During election time, the authorities will put pressure on us to speed up the evaluation process, which adds to our stress,” said S Karpagam, a science teacher at Pallavaram government school.

Teachers are also wary about speeding up the evaluation process, as there are chances of committing errors, she added.

According to the Right to Education (RTE) Act, teachers may be deputed mainly for three types of assignments – census, election duty and attending to disasters. Apart from these, they would also be involved in pulse polio campaigns, government surveys and also maintaining mid-day meal registers.

When election is scheduled, the teachers have the additional task of verifying voter IDs.

Many teachers opined that besides burdening them, deputing teachers on such activities could also affect students. As many are deputed for poll related work during election time, it is up to a few remaining teachers to handle the academic activities. If the election falls during summer break - when the evaluation exercise is on - it could impact the work and even the declaration of results.

“The RTE Act should be amended to ensure that no teacher is deployed for any non-academic purposes,” said M Kalaivanan, a Class 10 teacher and a member of UG Teachers’ Association. The association has sent several representations to the government to consider this request, he said, seeking a formal definition for teaching and non-teaching activities.

The National Institute of Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, had conducted a survey during the last Lok Sabha polls, which revealed that some State or the other has elections every year. The system finds the resources for the elections through government school teachers, and the non-availability of teachers, especially during election time, does affect teaching.

According to the Right to Education Act, Classes 1 to 5 should have 200 working days in an academic year, while it is 22 working days for Classes 6 to 8 (upper primary) with 45 hours work in a week. However, theNIEPA report revealed that only about 19 per cent of a teacher’s annual school hours is spent on teaching activities.