The mega parent-teacher meeting, parent workshops and Sikhiya Da Mahajashn campaign held across all Punjab’s government schools on Saturday have come under sharp criticism from teacher organisations and educationists.
Many teachers alleged that the massive “cosmetic” arrangements made under the guise of the mega PTM by the School Education Department were more focused on polishing the state government’s image on social media rather than addressing academic realities on the ground.
A fresh and highly structured operational directive was issued by the department to all schools. It confirms fears that the primary objective of this grand exercise was not student welfare or parental dialogue, but aggressive government ‘branding’ and ‘publicity’, alleged the teachers.
The departmental orders clearly indicated that the administration does not want to miss any opportunity to pat its own back using the government education machinery. To achieve this, government school teachers across Punjab were effectively pulled away from their core teaching duties and transformed into ‘video makers’, ‘interviewers’, and ‘social media managers.’
According to the ‘important directives’ issued for the event, every single government school in the state was handed a rigid campaign target to record and upload exactly 10 high-quality video testimonials from parents on the school’s social media handles.
To ensure absolute uniformity, teachers were handed a strict ‘recording protocol’ and interview script:
The guidelines mandate that the staff member holding the camera must stand strictly behind the camera. The interviewer must never appear on screen or in the frame, maintaining a sharp focus solely on “the parent".
The directive explicitly warns staff not to treat this as a mechanical checklist. Teachers are ordered to engage parents with “warmth-first," specifically to draw out a deep, genuine, and unscripted emotional connection regarding their children.
Teachers are restricted to asking only two core questions: First, “How do you feel about your child’s school?" and second, “What is the single biggest visible change you have witnessed here?"
Beyond videos, school teams must deploy physical ‘selfie standees’ strictly measuring 6 feet by 4 feet at high-footfall spaces. Staff are required to actively assist visitors and parents to pose alongside these standees to capture at least 10 high-resolution photographs.
To organise this publicity blitz under a unified tracking pipeline, the department made it mandatory for schools to use four specific hashtags for every single digital update.
The document carries a clear warning that the School Education Department of Punjab will be actively reviewing whether this work was completed or not across all locations by the close of the event.
The controversy escalated further today when teachers’ organisations revealed that the mega PTM was heavily weaponised as a political showcasing platform rather than an academic review. A large number of teachers pointed out that more than 1,100 vacancies of school principals are lying vacant out of a total of 2,000.
This hyper-focus on digital public relations and political branding has sparked intense resentment among the teaching community.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a government school teacher in Faridkot lamented: “Is our job to teach students or to create promotional reels and videos for the government’s social media pages? Parents come to school to discuss their children’s academic progress. Shoving a camera in their faces to extract forced praise for the administration is completely unethical. When the parents ask about the vacancies of teachers and principals in the schools, we have no answer and we have to cut a sorry figure."
Education experts argue that weaponising the emotions of parents and children as a ‘publicity tool’ using state funds and institutional pressure is highly condemnable.
They asserted that if a genuine ‘education revolution’ has taken place in Punjab, it should speak for itself on the ground, rather than requiring coerced likes, shares, and manufactured video clips from an already burdened teaching workforce.
