School kids to soon have lighter bags
Date :10-May-2019
Staff Reporter:
Bhilai
From June onwards, school bags would be lighter in weight for students of all classes (primary, upper primary and secondary classes) and will not be much of a physical burden for them. The reason being the department of school education in Chhattisgarh has decided to fix the school bag weight for classes 1 to 10. As per proposed plans of the department, students of class 1 as well as 2 should have a bag weight of 1.5 kg to 2 kg. On the other hand, the weight for students of class 3 to 5 should have 3 to 4 kgs while the weight of school bags for students of classes 6 to 8 should have 3 to 4 kg.
Meanwhile, weight of school bags for students of classes 9 to 10 should have been allotted to be in the range of 4 to 5 kgs. The maximum permitted weight of the school bags will not be more than 10% of the student’s body weight as well as they will also have a no school bag day’ every week for students of primary classes (1 to 5). These were some of the recommendations by an expert committee submitted to the department of school education and once the code of conduct is over, it will be sent to the school ministry for final approval. The final report, suggestions as well as recommendations of the committee were forwarded to the department in February of this year.
It is learnt that from last half a decade, it is debate from all quarters of the society, weight of the school bags is very heavy and in many schools, small children have been forced to carry school bags which are 50% to 60% of their body weight. During study, the committee found that on an average the weight of school bag for students of private unaided schools was 5 to 8 kg on an average of 3.7 kg per bag in the state. Hemant Upadhayay, Education Officer of Durg district said that the report also found that the weight of bag increased when students made the move from primary to secondary school.
Overall bag weights ranged in between 1.8 kg in class 1 of government school to a maximum of 8.3 kg per bag for a student of government aided schools in class 12, he added. Gautam Banerjee, RTE coordinator of the state mentioned that the maximum number of notebooks on average carried by a child was the highest in class 8 with students carrying an average of 10.5 notebooks across all categories. He also informed that the least was carried by students in class 1 with an average of 3.5 notebooks. Meanwhile, the average number of textbooks carried in class 8th was 6.2 kg, he added. Many students carried other materials such as lunch boxes, water bottle, sports equipments, musical instruments, extra books and pouches.