Punjab’s decision to ask government schools to record parent testimonials about a welfare scheme during a statewide Mega Parent-Teacher Meeting has created a dispute over where public-service communication ends and political promotion begins. The controversy is not only about videos or the presence of elected representatives. It concerns how schools, which are expected to remain institutionally neutral, are being used to deliver and publicly validate a government programme.
A circular issued by the State Council of Education Research and Training directed schools to record responses from parents, particularly mothers, about the Mawan-Dhiyaan Satkar Yojana during the Mega PTM scheduled for Friday. Parents were to be asked what the scheme meant to them, how they were using the financial assistance and whether they had a message for Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. Schools were also instructed to upload the videos on their websites, share them in parents’ WhatsApp groups and submit a mandatory quota of 10 clips with their PTM reports.
The scheme provides monthly direct financial assistance of Rs 1,500 to Scheduled Caste women and Rs 1,000 to women from general and other categories, according to the report. The directive also asked school officials to extend personal invitations to local MLAs, sarpanchs and other functionaries associated with the Aam Aadmi Party. These instructions place three separate activities inside one school event: parent-teacher engagement, awareness about a public welfare benefit and the production of public-facing testimonials for the government.
That combination is what has triggered opposition from teacher organisations. Vikramdev Singh, state president of the Democratic Teachers Front, said the administration was turning educational institutions into political propaganda tools. He argued that inviting political representatives and promoting government schemes during a PTM compromised the academic environment and the political neutrality of schools. His organisation urged school heads to restrict discussions to student attendance and academic progress.
The government’s stated justification is different. Sonali Giri, secretary in the department of school education, said publicising government schemes at school gatherings could ensure that eligible families did not miss financial benefits because they were unaware of them. The department’s position, as reported, is that schemes benefiting the public may be discussed among parents because many families may not know about their entitlements. The argument rests on an important administrative reality: schools are often among the few public institutions that maintain regular contact with households.
That reality, however, does not resolve the institutional question. A school can act as a channel for neutral information about eligibility, application procedures and access to a benefit. Requiring parents to answer questions about what a scheme means to them, how they are spending the money and what message they have for the chief minister is a different form of communication. It turns a service-delivery setting into a space where beneficiaries are invited to produce political-facing testimony.
The distinction matters because the power relationship inside a school is not equal. Teachers and school heads are implementing official instructions, while parents may experience the institution as an authority they must cooperate with in matters concerning their children. The supplied report does not establish whether participation in the videos was formally voluntary, whether parents could decline without consequence, how consent was to be recorded or how long the videos would remain online. Those omissions are central to assessing whether the exercise was an awareness campaign, a documentation exercise or a publicity programme.
The mandatory quota of 10 videos per school adds another layer. A quota changes the nature of the task from allowing interested parents to share experiences to requiring each school to produce a defined volume of material. It also creates an operational incentive for school staff to identify, persuade and record participants, even though the principal purpose of a PTM is to discuss students’ academic progress and attendance. The report does not provide the total number of participating schools or the intended statewide number of videos, so the scale of the publicity exercise cannot be established from the available information.
The use of school websites and parents’ WhatsApp groups is similarly consequential. These are not merely internal communication channels once videos are publicly uploaded or widely circulated. They become part of the state’s information infrastructure, carrying official messages into households through institutions that families may trust. The report does not specify whether the content would be reviewed before publication, who would control the recordings, whether the videos would be archived, or whether parents’ names and faces would be protected.
These questions are particularly relevant because the instructions combine a welfare scheme with a direct reference to the chief minister. A neutral school-based communication model would ordinarily need to separate factual information about a benefit from political messaging or praise. The reported questions, especially the request for a message to the chief minister, make that separation difficult. They also explain why teachers’ organisations have described the exercise as politicisation rather than routine scheme awareness.
At the same time, the criticism should not obscure the legitimate administrative problem identified by the education department. Direct financial assistance is useful only when eligible households know about it and can access it. Schools may have an unusually broad reach among families, and parent meetings provide a ready-made opportunity to distribute information. But the available report does not say whether the department considered less politically charged alternatives, such as written eligibility notices, help desks, application support or standardised information sessions without recorded testimonials.
The episode therefore exposes a wider weakness in public-service communication: the absence of a clearly stated boundary between informing citizens about entitlements and asking public institutions to endorse the government delivering them. When that boundary is not defined, teachers become messengers, event hosts, content producers and, potentially, intermediaries for political outreach. The result can place schools in conflict with their educational responsibilities even when the underlying welfare objective is legitimate.
It also raises a question about administrative accountability. The circular reportedly came from SCERT, while the defence was issued by the department of school education. The report does not clarify which authority will supervise compliance, evaluate the videos, handle consent or respond to complaints from parents and teachers. Nor does it state whether schools have been given written safeguards governing the participation of minors, the use of parents’ likenesses or the handling of personal information.
What the available evidence confirms is narrower but still important. Punjab schools were instructed to record and share parent testimonials about a cash-aid scheme during a Mega PTM; each school was asked to submit 10 clips; political representatives linked to the ruling party were to be invited; and a teachers’ organisation objected to the arrangement. The education department defended the move as a way to improve awareness of public benefits.
What remains unclear is whether the exercise was voluntary for parents, how the recordings would be governed and whether the same information could have been delivered without tying welfare access to political-facing testimonials. Those details will determine whether the directive becomes a routine model for school-based service delivery or remains a one-off publicity exercise. The next point to monitor is how schools implement the circular and whether the education authorities issue further clarification on participation, consent, content review and the role of political representatives.
