Private school teachers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi say a rising private school teachers workload of non-academic and extracurricular duties is leaving them under severe stress and pushing classroom teaching into the background.
Staff at leading private schools in the twin cities describe a calendar packed with Colour Day, Mango Day, welcome parties, week-long preparations for annual functions and sports galas, plus the creation of content for school social media pages. They say these tasks fall outside their appointments as educators and come without extra pay.
Events and marketing, not only lessons
Many teachers argue that colourful programmes are now used to draw admissions, while the work of staging them rests almost entirely on teaching staff. Competition among schools, they say, once turned on academic results; it now turns on who mounts the most elaborate functions. In that race, they warn, real teaching suffers.
Noshaba, a female teacher at a prominent private school, said staff were hired to teach, yet much of their time goes to classroom decoration, event management, dance rehearsals and making videos for school pages. She said teachers stay after school for preparations and that management holds them responsible if parents complain about even a single picture.
Longer days, no overtime
Tehreem, a teacher at a private school in Islamabad’s F-8 sector, said official hours end at 1:30 p.m., but during event season staff remain until 4 p.m. There is no overtime, she said, and those who refuse to stay face consequences in their evaluations.
Teachers also work as hosts, photographers and crowd managers at Parent-Teacher Meetings and fun fairs. A teacher from the I-8 sector said that on PTM and Fun Gala days they stand for seven to eight hours to manage the rush, then are expected to deliver lessons with the same energy the next day—something she described as extremely tiring.
What teachers say is at stake
Across these accounts, the private school teachers workload in the twin cities is framed less as occasional help with school life and more as a sustained shift of labour: marketing, logistics and media production layered onto the same people who must still teach. Staff link the pressure to exhaustion and to weaker focus on the classroom itself.
Aasan alfaaz mein
Islamabad aur Rawalpindi ke private school teachers kehta hain ke un ka kaam sirf parhana nahi raha. Unhein functions, decoration aur school ke videos bhi sambhalne parte hain, aksar school ke baad, bina overtime ke. Is wajah se thakaan barh rahi hai aur asal teaching pechhe reh rahi hai. Walidain aur schools ke liye yeh sawal hai ke events ke peeche asli taleem kitni bach rahi hai.
