CBSE asks schools to restrict teacher’s role only to academic work

Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has directed all its affiliated schools to restrict the role of teachers involved in non-academic work by issuing new operational guidelines. Earlier rules allowed private schools affiliated to the CBSE to allot non-teaching responsibilities to the teachers.  

The move comes after repeated complaints from the teachers about being saddled with non-teaching duties such as managing school canteens or travelling with children in buses. Many teachers had complained to the CBSE - the country’s biggest school board that private schools were trying to cut costs by asking teaching staff to multi-task by taking up other duties like managing canteens or doing an accountant’s job of collecting fee.

The new rules set by the Central Board of Secondary Education leaves little choice for CBSE affiliated schools as pointed out by CBSE secretary Joseph Emmanuel. In his letter to schools, Mr Emmanuel said, “Schools affiliated to CBSE shall ensure that teachers will not be engaged in activities other than those related to direct teaching, professional upgradation, examination, evaluation, et al. For activities of ministerial nature, transport or canteen for similar related tasks and separate trained staff may be deployed by the schools.”

Further clarifying on the subject, CBSE has said that teachers can only be given extraneous work related to the census, disaster relief or election; apart from their teaching duties in line with the Chapter IV of the Right to Education Act.

The final decision about restricting the duties of teaching staff to academic work was taken at Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) meeting in Delhi on October 25. The meeting was chaired by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and attended by education ministers of all states and UTs.

The CABE meeting also discussed amendments to the guidelines for transport arrangements and bus attendants for affiliated schools. Under the newly issued guidelines, all CBSE schools are required to hire a transport co-ordinator / manager which will look after transportation facilities being provided to the students. The guidelines also ask schools to hire qualified bus attendants to take care of the children. Finally, the rules also ask for a mandatory annual medical examination and physical fitness test (including eye test) for all the bus drivers.

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