Ministerial Push to Prob Teachers’ Workload

A wick of hard work and commitment of our teachers against all odds have helped our Kingdom realise healthy Net Primary Enrolment and Millennium Development Goals of achieving Universal Primary Education. Their persistent perseverance has secured our children to perpetually endow education with the standards of an international parity and of course to mature with the skills and confidence necessary to survive in the 21st-century mode of living.

Understanding the significant role played by the teachers in investing in the future of a nation, the new Education Minister has commissioned a team to study the teacher workload. This study is timely in that it has taken place amidst the period of unrelenting societal hue and cry on the decline of the quality of education which has still been not fully pacified.  

One as a parent also needs to share an equal dividend of worry because none of us would prefer to allow our children to be taught by someone who is disproportionately exhausted, drained and burdened to perform the duties satisfactorily.

Studies of a similar kind have already been introduced in educationally advanced nations like the United Kingdom and New Zealand in 1994 and 2005 respectively. Since then, such a robust educational endeavour has been an annual event in the UK owing to its significant impact on stimulating the quality teaching-learning process. The findings generated from the study suggested that most teachers quit teaching predominantly because of an insurmountable workload they need to endure. In New Zealand, bizarrely almost 60% of the teachers committed to quitting teaching when greener opportunities arise, for the reason that they need to shoulder hefty workloads. Due to these reasons, teacher attrition is considered very seriously in such nations because failing to consider one would mean witnessing the exodus from the teaching profession as more of a ritualistic episode.    

      

Nevertheless in essence, when we debate the workload of any profession, a comprehensive understanding of its delineation has to be gathered. Or else, without having the definition of workload clearly defined, it would be sophisticated to measure and calibrate the precise intensity of workload shouldered by the individual. Concerning teaching, in particular, those factors and assorted managerial duties that interrupt teachers from accomplishing the systematic teaching-learning process can be considered an unnecessary workload.

While planning and preparation of lessons or assessments of students’ progress are some fundamental professional duties of a teacher, at times, an imperative of maintaining every detail of the lesson that one teaches becomes only a feast to amuse those educational inspectors rather than making a positive impact on student learning and outcomes. Because lesson planning and its organization largely depend on the level of teaching experience, understanding of the curriculum and materials or the strategies, imposing a rigid figure or design in making a lesson often becomes punitive pedagogic taxation, and hence augments the workload.  

On a similar note, if one understands that educating our child is a shared responsibility of both parents and teacher, then parents assisting their child to follow up on the written feedback by the teachers in their notebooks can largely ease the friction of teachers’ workload. This mostly doesn’t take place in our kind of situation because we are victimized by a myth that educating our child is completely a teacher’s work. 

The lion’s share of teachers’ time in the school is spent on assessing student progress using the strategies and materials present at one’s disposal. So those tasks that necessarily don’t raise the academic standards of the pupil should be reduced or completely erased if at all possible from making the teachers do it. A specific person can be employed to carry out those assorted activities like games and culture, scouting and mask dances, or any co-curricular activities to enrich the much-espoused Quality Wholesome Education while retaining only teaching to the teachers.

While the feasibility of such provisions is practically arguable, instituting one can certainly help raise the students' standards academically.

Nevertheless, with the institution of a task force by His Excellency comprising those celebrated Bhutanese scholars, we sincerely wish that their investigation will shed some practical insights and solutions to address the complex issues of unnecessary teacher workload. Or least, we anticipate those recommendations and changes to inhale some oxygen of reality, genuineness, credibility and pragmatism.

I sincerely wish the team, Good Luck.

“A teacher takes a hand, open a mind and touches the heart”- Anonymous