India, Jan. 22 -- Despite state education minister Harjot Bains's clear directive to keep teachers away from non-teaching duties, the Punjab school education department has once again pulled them out of classrooms - this time in the middle of pre-board examinations - to conduct a door-to-door survey of dropout students across the state.

In a letter issued on January 19, the state project director of Punjab's Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan directed all district and block education officers, along with school heads, to complete a house-to-house survey to identify out-of-school children aged between 3 and 19 years by January 30.

The survey is to cover villages, wards, surrounding hamlets, railway stations, bus stands and other vulnerable location...