State plans to reduce weight of school bags

State school education minister Deepak Kesarkar said they are trying to figure out a way on how it will work

Mumbai To reduce the burden on children, who are forced to carry the inappropriate weight of school bags, the state school education department is contemplating a reduction in the weight of school bags by dividing textbooks into three parts.

Officials said that this way, students will not have to carry all notebooks everyday (HT Photo)

Officials said that this way, students will not have to carry all notebooks everyday.

State school education minister Deepak Kesarkar said they are trying to figure out a way on how it will work. “We are planning to divide each textbook into three parts but this will not help much because students will still have to carry notebooks. Considering this, we are thinking of attaching blank pages to the textbooks for writing notes,” Kesarkar said.

It means each textbook will be divided into three parts and each part will have blank pages attached to it, which will help the students take down notes in the textbooks itself. Hence, they will not have to carry textbooks separately, Kesarkar explained.

“We are in the process of taking this decision. It will bring convenience for the students and they can focus on studies,” he said.

Students rights activists have welcomed the move. Anubha Sahai, president, Indiawide Parents Association, said that they welcome the move which can be implemented across the country. “It is a very good initiative by the education minister. We have been asking him to divide the textbook. We will work to ensure that the same pattern is adopted across other states,” Sahai said.

The weight of school bags borne by kids has been a sore spot for both parents as well as institutions for many years, leading to a petition being filed by a Pune-based activist in the Bombay high court in 2015.

In 2014, the state government announced a policy to reduce the weight of bags, which said that the bags should not weigh more than 10% of the child’s weight. In 2020, the ministry of education released the ‘Policy on School Bag 2020’, highlighting the same cap on their weight.

A study in 2015 by the city’s largest public health facility, KEM Hospital, said that heavy bags are a prominent cause of Low Back Pain (LBP) amongst school going children. The study found that nine in 20 children had complained of back pain caused by heavy school bags. The problem is so severe that many parents take time off their work to help their children carry the bags.