Save teachers from paperwork. How is the President's instruction being implemented in practice in the Vitebsk region?

The Head of State focused on reducing paperwork in teaching activities at the Republican Pedagogical Council held in August. The President noted that teachers do a lot of extracurricular work, and therefore it is unacceptable to load them with meaningless bureaucratic writing, and demanded a radical solution to the problem. According to a new decree of the Ministry of Education, school principals are required to review the list of documentation that teachers need to fill out. The correspondent of "BB" learned how these changes work in practice.

The course for optimization

Secondary school No. 4 in Vitebsk responded promptly to the order.

– All our teaching staff are familiar with the updated list, which made it possible to avoid unnecessary planning and educational documentation, – emphasizes the director of the school Svetlana Okuskova. – At the same time, if assistance is required in organizing an event, the teacher knows that he will receive financial incentives for additional work, this is spelled out in the collective agreement.

According to the director, bureaucracy in the educational sphere is rather an exaggeration.

– Teachers do not need to write additional reports or references. It is only important to fulfill their official duties within the framework of the law, while focusing on the formation of a student's correct civic position," she notes. – I think that the problem lies in the fact that not all teachers are able to correctly prioritize and manage their time.

Experience is the head of everything

Elena Zubakina, a teacher with 30 years of experience, supports the course on optimization. He teaches history and social studies lessons, heads the educational and methodological association of subject teachers. Her students achieve success every year. This year alone, the students won 12 diplomas at the II stage of the Republican Olympiad in academic subjects. And this result is followed by a lot of additional teacher training for classes. She actively helps young colleagues, shares with them her techniques and techniques that make the lessons really exciting.

– The teacher's work does not always fit into the framework of the working day. When I have a one–shift schedule, I devote the evening to classes with gifted children and preparation for the Olympics," she says. – As for the documentation, this is an important part of the work. But this should not distract from the very essence of teaching. This is what the changes we have come to are aimed at.

There is always a lot of work behind the result

Yana Shchukina is a young teacher of Russian language and literature, a foreign language, and also a class teacher. She returned to the walls of her native school immediately after graduating from university. Now she is preparing to take the first qualification category and is actively preparing for lessons.

– When you love your job, you don't notice how much time you spend on planning, – the teacher admits. – If you calculate, on average, it takes about two hours a day to prepare for lessons. As a young teacher, I need to conduct after-school planning. Computers, printers, interactive whiteboards that are available at school – all this greatly simplifies the preparation of materials and helps to concentrate on their interesting presentation.

The workflow does not create an unnecessary burden, the teacher believes.

– There is an opinion that classroom management consists of paperwork, but in fact this is not the case. For the successful performance of duties, it is necessary to keep several important documents: a class journal, personal cards of students, socio-pedagogical characteristics of the class, minutes of parent meetings, a work plan for the half–year, to check diaries, the interlocutor explains. – Of course, the work of a teacher requires a lot of time and effort. As in any business, in order to achieve a result, you need to be ready to work," she sums up.

Elena BOGDANOVICH, First Deputy Head of the Main Department for Education of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee:

– The list of documents maintained by teaching staff was approved by a decree of the Ministry of Education back in December 2017, in November of this year it was specified, supplemented with categories of such employees as: teacher-psychologist, social pedagogue, head of military-patriotic education. The decision of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee No. 771 dated November 21, 2024 "On streamlining the activities of teaching staff and reducing document flow in the education system" was adopted. All this is aimed at fulfilling the instructions of the Head of State and will allow us to adjust individual approaches, form a correct understanding of teachers' job responsibilities and generally work for the prestige of the teaching profession.

Photo by Alexey VRONSKY.

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