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This is the “Education Weekly Insights” column of Tencent News Education Channel. Each issue will analyze and comment on hot topics in education, policy directions or personal opinions in the past week.

Recently, some regions have successively issued notices on "clearing out the meaningless on-duty duties of primary and secondary school teachers". Teachers in the implemented areas generally applauded, while teachers in areas where it has not been implemented are eagerly waiting, hoping that it can be implemented as soon as possible.

Meaningless on-duty work exists among primary and secondary school teachers. Due to its secrecy and habitual nature, it is not easy to notice and does not seem to be an important issue. However, it takes up the normal rest time and autonomy of front-line teachers.This concentrated cleanup of meaningless on-duty tasks for primary and secondary school teachers is an important part of the work of reducing burdens at the grassroots level.

Since the beginning of this year, the central government has made clear requirements to reduce the burden on grassroots units and resolutely rectify the problems of formalism and bureaucracy. To this end, various regions have conducted extensive explorations on reducing the burden on grassroots units, and reducing the burden on primary and secondary schools is also an important part of the work of reducing the burden on grassroots units.

Meaningless duty work is actually a small part of the many formalistic workloads faced by primary and secondary schools.Teachers often have to face formalistic work such as inspection and assessment by various departments, task assignment, activity development, forwarding and liking, punching in and voting, etc.These tasks squeeze teachers' normal teaching time, which suppresses necessary, substantive and creative activities in teaching management. When teaching work is replaced by bureaucratic task pressure and formalistic task burden, teachers' professional identity and desire for educational exploration will decline, thus affecting the healthy growth of students.

More importantly, when teachers have to do meaningless things frequently, students and their parents’ respect for teachers will decrease. For example, when teachers often have to complete tasks assigned by their superiors, they need to constantly mobilize students or parents, which will make students and their parents very annoyed, thus reducing their respect for teachers, which in turn affects the authority and enthusiasm of teachers. Meaningless duty work may seem irrelevant to students and their parents, but teachers’ meaningless input will reduce their identification with their professional identity and cause students and their parents to misunderstand that they are “not doing their job properly” or “not doing their job properly”.

Why does “meaningless duty” occur?

The fundamental reason why formalistic work represented by "meaningless duty" comes into being is thatBureaucratic styleandRisk aversion logicImpact.

Bureaucracy refers to a leadership and work style that is out of touch with the masses, out of touch with reality, and arbitrary. There may indeed be some accidents during holidays in schools, and someone needs to be on duty to prevent risks, but the probability of accidental risks is very small. Generally speaking, it is enough to arrange a security guard, butIn order to guard against possible risks, many schools have arranged security guards and leaders, and leaders and ordinary teachers. It seems that multiple "bumpers" have been installed for holiday shifts, but in the end, they have nothing to do during their shifts.In order to solve the problem of eating for leaders and teachers on duty during holidays, some schools have to arrange canteen chefs, which results in many people not being able to rest properly and a lot of administrative costs. This arrangement far exceeds actual needs and is an ineffective investment under the logic of risk aversion.

The reasons why schools have become the hardest hit areas of formalism and teachers have become the victims of formalism are mainly due to the following reasons:

First, the school is a highly organized institution with a clear internal division of labor. When superiors assign tasks to the school, the school can easily find the corresponding responsible parties and delegate the tasks.

Second, educational work is pure and time-flexible. School teachers do have some flexible time at their own disposal. This time flexibility was originally used for teachers to carry out creative work. However, with the increase in administrative affairs, once superiors issue work tasks, it is easy to squeeze out the time that teachers use for creative activities.

Third, the teaching staff has a high level of education and a strong ability to complete tasks assigned by superiors. They can write and speak, know how to use network technology, and are good at grasping policy goals and intentions. Regardless of whether the policy is reasonable or not, they can complete the tasks assigned by their superiors.

Fourth, the school is a highly mobilized organization, and teachers and students are highly obedient to organizational arrangements and have a sense of discipline. When the school undertakes a task from a higher level, the school first mobilizes the teachers, and the teachers then mobilize the students, forming a linked mobilization system.

Therefore, all higher-level departments are happy to assign tasks to schools, and when higher-level authorities design systems, teachers have to accept them regardless of whether they are reasonable or not.

Non-teachers always think that one of the biggest benefits of being a teacher is the winter and summer vacations, and that they can work for three months without going to work. In fact, this is a big misunderstanding of the teaching community. A lot of teachers' work is secretive, such as preparing lessons, home visits, training, self-study, etc., which are not necessarily completed in the classroom, school or during the prescribed working hours. They need to spend a lot of extra time. Some teachers who love education management even spend the entire summer vacation to recharge themselves and explore how to better educate and train students.

In addition, this misunderstanding of the teaching group by the outside world also comes from the fact that teachers have to undertake a lot of formalistic work, which reduces the quality of teaching. Therefore, non-teaching groups will complain about teachers' holidays, thinking that they enjoy "benefits" but do not teach well. Therefore, they do not sympathize or understand teachers' "meaningless overtime" on holidays, thinking that they deserve it.

How to truly reduce the burden on teachers?

Various places have issued notices on "clearing out the meaningless on-duty work of primary and secondary school teachers", and some regions are making every effort to reduce the burden on grassroots units. This shows the determination and attitude of the higher-level government to reduce this kind of formalism, which is worthy of promotion and should be implemented seriously.Whether the notice can be truly implemented and whether the formal burden on teachers can be completely reduced depends on changing management thinking and establishing a burden-reduction mechanism.

From the perspective of management thinking, first, we need to change our risk-averse thinking, acknowledge the objectivity of risk, tolerate the existence of risk, prevent risks but do not be overly risk-averse, and try to achieve zero risk. Second, we need to change our mindset of arbitrary accountability, and do not indiscriminately hold cadres accountable as soon as a problem occurs. Many unexpected risks occur not because the responsible party is irresponsible, but because other parties are irresponsible, or because of natural disasters or man-made disasters. These objective factors may be unavoidable no matter how hard the responsible party tries.

For example, in the summer, teachers are required to carry out "drowning prevention" propaganda. Teachers talk about it in class, after class, at school, and during home visits. However, some students still do not listen to the advice and insist on going swimming, causing accidents. Can teachers be blamed for being irresponsible in this case? However, many regions will put the responsibility for drowning on teachers, believing that they have not done enough, and therefore hold them accountable. This kind of accountability is obviously unreasonable. Teachers should not be forced to be treated as omnipotent super-powered people. We must respect facts and tolerate risks.

In terms of the burden reduction mechanism, first, we need to make systematic deployment and promote it as a whole. The generation of burdens at the grassroots level is not a problem of a certain department at a certain level of government, but a problem involving multiple departments at multiple levels of government. If we want to reduce it, we have to reduce it together. A section chief of a department of the municipal party committee once said, "I don't want to roll over now, and the cadres below are happy." The cadres in the townships deeply agreed with this. They said, "The section chief is always 'innovative' and always 'diligent', so we have to follow suit. If the section chief works overtime for one night, we have to work overtime for ten days or half a month."

Second, a burden reduction list can be established. The reason why burden reduction policies have been introduced many times before but have achieved little effect is mainly because the problems are not clear and governments and departments at all levels have no grasp. This year, some regions have tried to set up burden reduction lists. The problems are clear, the direction is clear, and the operability is strong. The relevant departments have a very clear understanding of a certain task, and they can reduce it as soon as they say it will be reduced. For example, the issue of "clearing the duty without practical significance" this time is very clear. Those who should not be on duty will not be on duty. The education bureau and schools do not need to arrange this work, arrange personnel on duty, or arrange leaders to check on the duty.

Third, a monitoring mechanism can be established to supervise and inspect the implementation of the burden-reduction work. If a department continues to assign formalistic work or work irrelevant to the school, the relevant department must be criticized and reported. This will not only have a deterrent effect, but also serve as a model for burden reduction.

(Author: Lei Wanghong | Lecturer at the School of Public Administration, Central South University, research interests include grassroots governance and urban and rural education)

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