Many years ago, at one of India’s well-known boarding schools in the Nilgiris, it was customary for housemasters to write a personal letter to the parents of every student in their house at the end of each school term. There were no templates, no standard comments and certainly no software that generated report card remarks at the click of a button. Each letter reflected careful observation of the child over the previous three months—academic progress, friendships, leadership, setbacks, sporting achievements, interests and character. They were not merely school reports; they were thoughtful essays about a young person’s growth.
Some of those letters still exist. Reading them today, one is struck not only by the warmth of the observations but also by the quality of the writing. The language is elegant without being elaborate. The descriptions are perceptive without becoming sentimental. Above all, they reveal teachers who had taken the time to watch, to reflect and then to communicate with care. Those letters were written by educators who regarded writing as an integral part of their profession.
Curious to know whether this tradition still survived, we made a few enquiries. The answer was disappointing. The detailed, handwritten letters had disappeared many years ago, replaced by a few typed lines about each child. We were told that even these brief reports were often vetted by an English teacher before being sent to parents because many teachers struggled to express themselves clearly in writing. What lingered long after the conversation had ended, however, was not the change in process but the quiet regret in the voice of a senior teacher who had watched the profession evolve over several decades. “Our teachers can no longer write clearly,” he said.
That is a sobering observation, particularly because it comes not from a struggling school but from one of India’s most respected boarding schools. If an institution with a long tradition of excellence in English communication is confronting this reality, it suggests that the issue extends far beyond a single campus. Something fundamental has changed in the professional life of teachers.
Writing is not just a language skill
Teaching is, before anything else, a profession built on communication. Every lesson, whether in mathematics, science, history or literature, depends upon the ability to organise ideas, explain them with clarity and communicate them in ways that stimulate curiosity. Every examination question, report card, piece of written feedback, lesson plan and communication with a parent requires a teacher to put thoughts into words. The ability to write clearly is therefore not an additional qualification expected only of an English teacher; it is a fundamental professional skill for every teacher.
Good writing is also closely connected to good thinking. Writing forces us to decide what we mean, distinguish the important from the incidental, organise an argument and communicate it so that another person can understand it. Reading develops the other side of the same intellectual habit: the ability to follow an argument, encounter unfamiliar ideas, interpret complexity and recognise different ways of seeing the world. These are precisely the abilities that we expect teachers to cultivate in children.
India has rightly recognised the central importance of literacy. The National Education Policy 2020 places foundational literacy and numeracy at the highest level of educational priority, recognising that children who fail to acquire basic reading and writing skills in the early years will struggle with subsequent learning. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), too, has repeatedly drawn attention to weaknesses in children’s reading abilities. Enormous attention is therefore being directed towards improving the literacy of our students.
Much less attention is directed towards the literacy of the adults teaching them. This is particularly significant because decades of educational research have established the central importance of teacher quality to student learning. Research into literacy instruction also reinforces the importance of teachers’ own knowledge of language and literacy. A child is unlikely to develop a rich relationship with language merely through textbooks and exercises. Teachers themselves provide some of the most important models of how adults read, think, explain and write.
When writing becomes a checklist
None of this should be read as an indictment of today’s teachers. The problem is much larger than the individuals who enter the profession. Teachers today work within an education system increasingly dominated by prescribed textbooks, examination requirements, learning outcomes, assessments, administrative compliance, documentation and digital reporting. Add WhatsApp groups, parent communications, co-curricular responsibilities, meetings and the growing number of records that schools are expected to maintain, and there is remarkably little space left for sustained reading or thoughtful writing.
Writing itself has consequently become increasingly mechanical. Teachers fill forms, enter marks, complete lesson-plan formats, select report-card descriptors and respond to messages. Much of this work is necessary, but very little of it develops the ability to construct an idea or express an observation in sustained prose. Even a motivated teacher who enters the profession with a love of books and writing can gradually have that inclination drained away by a system that rewards completing the next task far more readily than thinking deeply about it.
This is a pity, because a profession gradually becomes what it repeatedly practises. When teachers spend most of their professional writing time completing boxes and entering data, we should hardly be surprised if sustained writing becomes difficult. The loss is greater than declining standards of grammar or elegance of prose. What is also lost is the discipline of observation, reflection and intellectual engagement that writing encourages.
Put writing back into teacher development
Schools cannot solve all these systemic problems, but they can deliberately make room for writing again. Teacher development need not consist only of workshops on curriculum, assessment, technology, artificial intelligence and classroom management. Schools could conduct a writing workshop every term in which teachers actually write. They could encourage teachers to write about a classroom experience, describe a child they have taught, review a book, explain an idea from their subject, or reflect on a lesson that succeeded or failed.
The purpose should not be to turn teachers into literary writers. It should be to restore the habit of sustained thought and clear expression. Reports that genuinely require professional judgement could also provide opportunities for this. A thoughtful paragraph about a child’s development is more demanding than selecting a comment from a drop-down menu, but the very act of composing it requires the teacher to observe the child, reflect on what has happened and communicate that understanding precisely.
Reading must accompany writing. Schools that want children to read should make it possible for teachers to read as well. A small staff library, a book discussed once a term, articles circulated among departments or simply time set aside for professional reading can begin to restore an intellectual dimension to school life that is easily lost amid the demands of the timetable.
Two blank sheets of paper
There is also one very simple place to begin: teacher recruitment. Alongside the résumé, demonstration class and interview, give every candidate two blank sheets of paper and twenty minutes. Ask them to write about themselves, why they became a teacher, what motivates them, what good teaching means to them, or perhaps about a student they remember particularly well. No template, no internet and no AI assistance—just an opportunity to think and write.
This need not be a pass-or-fail test. Indeed, given the realities of teacher recruitment, schools may discover that many otherwise promising candidates struggle with the exercise. That itself is valuable information. The writing sample can reveal something a formatted résumé and rehearsed interview often cannot: whether a candidate can organise thoughts, construct sentences, communicate an idea and reflect on experience. More importantly, it tells the school where professional development may be needed after recruitment.
The blank sheet is therefore not intended as a device for finding fault with teachers. It is a starting point for recognising a skill that schools have perhaps neglected for too long.
Creating space for teachers to write
There has been a noticeable decline in sustained reading and writing across society, and it would be unrealistic to imagine that the teaching profession has somehow remained untouched by it. The quality and range of what many of us read have changed, while much of our daily written communication has been reduced to short messages, fragments and increasingly machine-assisted text. The effects are particularly serious in teaching because teachers are responsible for passing the habits of reading, thinking and expression to the next generation.
The responsibility cannot simply be placed on teachers. A textbook-oriented, examination-driven and increasingly bureaucratic education system has contributed greatly to the problem. It leaves teachers with little time to read beyond what they must teach and gives them few reasons to write beyond what they must submit. Even those who enter the profession with intellectual curiosity can find that curiosity gradually squeezed out by the mechanics of school life.
This is where principals and school heads can make a difference. They may not be able to change the examination system or eliminate every administrative requirement, but they can determine what their own schools value. They can create space for teachers to read, give them genuine opportunities to write, provide help where writing skills are weak and recognise thoughtful communication as an important part of professional development. The two blank sheets at the recruitment interview could be one small beginning.
The handwritten letters from that Nilgiris school belonged to another age, and there is neither the need nor the possibility of recreating that age. What is worth recovering is the professional capacity those letters represented: a teacher observing a child carefully, reflecting on what he had seen, and finding the words to communicate it clearly and thoughtfully. If our schools can restore even some of that habit of reading, thinking and writing among teachers, the greatest beneficiaries will ultimately be the children they teach.
The ideas, opinions, and perspectives expressed in this editorial are those of the publication. AI-assisted tools may have been used to support research, drafting, and editing.
Sources quoted: Ministry of Education, National Education Policy 2020; ASER Centre, Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024; Porter et al., Reading and Writing (2024), “Effects of Teacher Knowledge of Early Reading on Students’ Gains in Reading Foundational Skills and Comprehension”; Piasta et al., Scientific Studies of Reading (2009), “Teachers’ Knowledge of Literacy Concepts, Classroom Practices, and Student Reading Growth.”