Schools help kids shed baggage
NEW DELHI: The war on backbreaking school bags has been on for over two decades now, but little has been done to reduce the load on young backs.
The human resource development ministry, which has been on the job for a lighter satchel for schoolchildren, recently proposed to chalk out a system that will have chapters of a book in separate, smaller booklets for every term.
The ministry had earlier asked the National Council of Education Research and Training to cut the curriculum following recommendations made by the Yashpal Committee in its 1993 report, Learning without Burden.
In 2012, the Delhi high court said a packed school bag should not weigh more than 10% of a child’s body weight. The judgment came after a Class 6 student carrying a heavy bag fell to his death as he lost his balance while leaning over a railing in a Delhi school.
The court verdict had little effect, though.
Children continue to carry a heavy load to school risking their backbones. An eight-yearold Class 4 student, Pihu Tiwari of Delhi, weighs 29kg and runs a marathon with a 12-kilo bag on her back. At least that’s what her walk from the school gate to her second floor classroom feels like.
She doesn’t just get tired but often pants her way up the stair case. “She is thin and weighs 29kg. And every day, she has to carry a bag to school which is almost half her weight. My heart goes out to her as I fear it may start affecting her back,” said mother Sunita Tiwari.
Pihu’s back may be spared as the HRD ministry recently proposed to come up with a system in which chapters of a book can be segregated for every term making the bags lighter.
Schools are trying too. In all branches of Bal Bharti Public School, the weight of bags is regularly monitored. The teachers weigh the bags every morning and a monthly report is submitted to the principal. “After going through these reports, sensitisation programmes are held among parents and they are explained on what books are to be carried to the school on a particular day,” said LV Sehgal, principal of Bal Bharti.
Acknowledging that a majority of children aged below 10 suffer from orthopaedic problems because of heavy bags, Maharashtra recently fixed the responsibility of reducing bag weight with the principal and set November 30 as the deadline for implementing reforms. The maximum weight to be carried by students of classes 1 to 8 was fixed between 1.8kg and 3.4kg.
Parents complain that Delhi schools often fail to provide individual lockers and ask students to carry two notebooks and books each for maths, Hindi and English, completely ignoring the NCERT syllabi. To deal with this, in schools like GD Goenka, homework is sent and submitted online. “No class would get more than two subjects’ homework a day,” said Rima Aliwadi, principal of GD Goenka School.
In Springdales, Pusa Road, they are trying to implement a system where students are divided into groups with each using one textbook.