‘My life is gone with this job’: effects of precarious working conditions on helmet teachers’ personal and professional lives in neoliberal Nepal

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a case study conducted in Mid-western Nepal, aiming to explore the potential impacts of precarious working conditions on part-time teachers’ lives and identify ways to eliminate those working conditions. The data for the study were collected using semi-structured interviews from purposefully selected part-time teachers teaching in public higher secondary schools in the study area. The data analysis reveals that part-time teachers work in highly precarious working contexts that have negatively impacted their personal and professional lives. They think that they do not have financial stabilities, job securities and professional development opportunities. Additionally, the findings suggest that they can unsnare themselves from the precarious working conditions by lobbying the government to reform its teacher hiring policies, rejecting this kind of teaching and running their own academic institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• precarious working conditions
• policy reforms
• professional development
• helmet teachers
• higher secondary schools

Disclosure statements

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).