MUMBAI, Aug. 29 -- 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. 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." The calendar applies to all state board-affiliated schools, including government, aided and unaided institutions. 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."...