Kids have lighter bags
A primary school in Tanjung Bungah cut the weight of all its pupils’ schoolbags by 30% to 50% by installing pigeonhole shelves in every classroom.
Without any fear that their stuff would go missing, they leave their books, colour pencils and even musical instruments in their open pigeonholes.
Their bags now hold only their homework and books needed for revision at home.
SJK (C) Hun Bin school board chairman Tan Sri Tan Kok Ping said it had cost RM60,000 to instal custom-made wooden shelves with 40 pigeonholes in each of the school’s 24 classrooms.
Each child gets a space measuring 33cm tall, 20cm wide and 30cm deep.
Teachers then trained them to manage their space, regulate what goes into their bags and nurtured them to respect each other’s property left on the shelves.
In a January trial run on a Year Five class, the school board was saddened that of the 18 kids in the trial, 12 of them had bags weighing 9kg to 10kg while the lightest, just one, was 6kg.
“The weight of a Year Five child is between 28kg and 30kg. A Year One pupil usually weighs 18kg to 20kg.
“When they have a 9kg to 11kg schoolbag, I saw that they could not even lift the bags or on their shoulders.
“They had to use bags with rollers and when they went upstairs, they edged the bags up step by step,” said Tan.
During the trial, Tan said their bags were regularly weighed and two months later, the median weight fell to 6kg and three children managed their bags till they were merely 4kg each.
The school has since commissioned pigeonhole shelves for every classroom with a fund of RM20,000 from the school and RM40,000 from local developer Kerjaya Prospek Sdn Bhd.
Tan felt the pigeonholes were effective because it reduced instances of the kids forgetting to bring books they need for particular classes.
But he said it might be difficult to implement in schools which have afternoon and morning sessions.
“We can do it in SJK (C) Hun Bin because the school only has a morning session,” he said.
School headmaster Yao Ping Yoon said it was possible that many pupils had not learned to manage their school bags according to their timetables and brought everything.
He urged parents to pay attention to their children’s schoolbags and teach them to manage what to bring daily.