Gujarat Education Minister Dr Pradyuman Vaja has ordered a committee of senior officials to study the non-teaching work that teachers in government primary and secondary schools carry, and to recommend cuts. Vaja gave the direction at a review meeting in Gandhinagar on 17 October, ANI reported. According to IANS, the review covers teacher training, data entry on online portals and duties that other departments assign to teachers.
The panel will draw officials from the Education Department, the Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training (GCERT), Samagra Shiksha and the office of the Commissioner of Schools. It will report to the state government, which will take the final call. Principal Secretary (Education) Milind Torawane and Director of Primary Education Prakash Trivedi attended the meeting. Neither report gives the committee a deadline.
A complaint teachers have pressed for weeks
The review follows pressure from teachers’ organisations. On 19 September, TV9 Gujarati reported that the Akhil Bharatiya Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh had written to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel about the data-entry burden. The federation said teachers type the same details into several portals, receive online information requests late at night, and handle registrations for quizzes, competitions and the Khel Mahakumbh.
Its demands were concrete: a “One Data, One Platform” system, permanent recruitment of clerks and assistants for schools, and an end to late-night data requests. The federation also said its state executive would plan an agitation at a meeting on 31 October and 1 November if the government did not act. The minister’s order lands two weeks before that meeting.
Election work adds to the load. During the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in late 2025, Gujarat teachers served as booth-level officers and went door to door with enumeration forms, Counterview reported. Section 27 of the Right to Education Act, 2009 bars the deployment of teachers for non-educational work, with three exceptions: the census, disaster relief and elections. Event registrations and data requests from other departments arguably fall outside those exceptions, which hands the unions a legal point alongside the practical one.
What it could change in classrooms
For parents, the stake is teaching time. In a village school with a handful of teachers, an afternoon spent on a portal can leave a class without a lesson. Vaja framed the classroom as a teacher’s real workplace and said the department would pursue the change in “mission mode”, according to the ANI report.
The committee’s options run from merging portals into a single data system, as the Mahasangh wants, to moving data work onto clerical staff. The second route needs recruitment and a budget line, so the state will have to decide how much it is willing to spend.
What to watch next
- A deadline and published terms of reference for the committee.
- Any order that consolidates portals or stops other departments from assigning work straight to teachers.
- Whether the Mahasangh drops or proceeds with its agitation plans at the 31 October-1 November meeting.
Sources: ANI via Asianet Newsable, IANS via SocialNews.XYZ, TV9 Gujarati, Counterview
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.