Centre mulling to relieve teachers from poll duties: MoS HRD

Union Minister of State (MoS) for HRD Ram Shankar Katheria today said the Centre was mulling to relieve government school teachers from non-academic assignments such as election duty etc, in order to improve the quality of education.
According to Katheria, deliberations are on to find out a solution so that teachers are not occupied in such non-academic work which adversely affects the education of children.
"These school teachers are given election and Census data collection duties. They are also given assignments for implementing various schemes. Our government has taken up this issue. We are doing deliberations to find out a solution," said Katheria, who was here for the 19th Nirma International Conference on Management held at Nirma University.

He further stated that the government also wanted to make sure that the teachers focused only on imparting education.
The issue of putting teachers for election as well as Census duties has been a widely debated issue in India, as directives also came from Supreme Court in this regard in the past, where it asked the government not to assign such duties to teachers during working hours.
Time and again, various teachers' associations as well as schools across India have raised objections on the practice, claiming such non-academic tasks given to the teachers was hampering the education of children.
On being asked about the government's stand in this regard, Katheria told media persons, "We also want that teachers are not given such duties, so that they can concentrate only on imparting education. We are trying our best to find a solution.