Academic calendar of edu dept shows up burden of non-academic duties on teachers

Maharashtra's education department has released a detailed academic calendar for 2025-26, but teachers worry it increases non-teaching burdens, affecting education quality.

MUMBAI: For the first time, the Maharashtra school education department has released a comprehensive academic calendar detailing all educational, extracurricular, and administrative activities for the academic year 2025-26. The calendar has been designed to help schools, teachers and education offices plan their work more effectively, with tasks scheduled month-wise and week-wise. However, teacher associations have expressed concerns about the heavy burden of non-academic duties on teachers, as specified in the schedule, leaving them with limited time for teaching.

Academic calendar of edu dept shows up burden of non-academic duties on teachers

According to the calendar, teachers are expected to manage around 15 non-educational tasks every month in addition to their regular teaching responsibilities. These include uploading student data, coordinating various government initiatives and handling administrative work.

Mahesh Palkar, director of education for the secondary and higher secondary divisions, and Sharad Gosavi, director of primary education, have sent a letter to all schools explaining the purpose behind the calendar. “To complete any work in a quality manner and within the prescribed time, effective planning is necessary,” says the letter. “Various activities are organised at the state, district, taluka and school levels for the overall development of students, and the proper planning and effective implementation of these is necessary. Officers and teachers at various levels were involved in preparing this calendar.”

The calendar applies to all state board-affiliated schools, including government, aided and unaided institutions. It classifies educational activities into three stages—daily tasks, weekly tasks and monthly tasks for students from Class 1 to Class 12. The plan also extends beyond teachers and schools, involving offices at the state, divisional, district, taluka and cluster levels, ensuring that all administrative actions are completed within prescribed timelines.

However, teachers associations argue that the document exposes how much non-teaching work is expected from educators. Mahendra Ganpule, former vice-chairperson of the State Principals Association, said, “This calendar itself shows that the government is assigning a lot of non-educational work to teachers. Apart from teaching, we are expected to handle tasks like uploading students’ data on several mobile apps. The department must ensure that this extra workload does not affect classroom teaching.”

Criticising the schedule further, Jalindar Sarode, working president of the State Shikshak Sena, said, “In this schedule, the Progressive Assessment Test exams are once again set for the third week of April. This means schools will shut only by the end of April. The plan focuses more on meeting the department’s data requirements rather than the schools’ needs. It reduces schools autonomy and squeezes the teaching period, leaving less time to provide quality education.”

Sarode added that teachers were discussing the subject informally. “We are of the opinion that now that a calendar has been released, the government should not give us any more non-academic work by issuing circulars now and then like they do,” he said.