Teaching and non-teaching staff of schools and colleges have been sent on training for census duties, disrupting the academic process in educational institutions.
The educational task of the census began on Thursday and faculty and staff members will serve as enumerators in the actual census.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) will conduct the seventh national census, which is currently scheduled to take place from February 1 to March 4, 2023.
Teachers were ambivalent about their census duties. A teacher, requesting anonymity, said it was a sudden and unplanned move by the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), which is hampering the normal functioning of schools and colleges.
Management ropes in teachers who are on census duty and students suffer. Our teachers have not completed almost half of the syllabus yet, the teacher added.
Another teacher said the academic program in government schools had been derailed. The administration did not even bother to ask the principals about the availability of teachers.
FDE should not have shown an indifferent attitude in this sensitive matter. After all, it is a matter for our future generation. A plan should be devised to deal with the issue, the teacher said.
The teacher added that only non-teaching staff should be placed on census duty because when teachers leave schools and colleges to attend training, students suffer the most.
Another teacher said that for the first time college teachers are being taken up for this job. Sending them door to door to collect census data is ridiculous. None of the professors expected to be assigned to census duty in the officer cadre. Teachers should not be forced to do census duties because it would leave a negative impact on educational activities,” the teacher argued.