Parents ask government to implement school bag weight guidelines

BHUBANESWAR: The All Odisha Parents’ Association has urged the state government to strictly implement the school bag weight limits prescribed by the ministry of human resource development (MHRD). They alleged that most government or private schools in the state were not implementing the MHRD’s guidelines on reducing the weight of school bags.
“The weight of the bag of a Class III student studying in a CBSE school varies between 7 and 9 kg.This, according to the guidelines, should be between 2 and 3 kg. I personally weighed the bags of children studying in different classes, in different schools. I found that only in a few cases were the children carrying lighter bags,” said Basudev Bhatt, convener of All Odisha Parents’ Association.
In a letter to school and mass education minister Badri Narayan Patra, Bhatt called for strict implementation of the guidelines and asked the state government to carry out random checks in schools.
“Due to the heavy weight of the school bags, most children complain of pain in the back, shoulder and problems of posture. Long-term distortion of the spinal cord is also possible. If departments conduct raids at regular intervals, things may improve,” said Bhatt, adding that states such as Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi were working actively to lighten students’ bags.
A senior officer in the school and mass education department said on the condition of anonymity that the state government had issued an order asking schools to reduce the weight of school bags. “Implementation has been a problem,” the officer added.
The parents’ association also asked the government to make schools follow the MHRD’s and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s guidelines on not giving homework to children up to Class II. “On one hand, we are talking about making learning joyous. On the other, we impose so much homework on our children every day. The government should look into the matter,” said Bhatt.
The Confederation of Odisha Public Schools, however, said implementation of the guidelines was hardly possible in a practical manner.
“The recent guidelines of the MHRD have only been implemented in Lakshadweep. Most parents complain if we don’t give homework to children. They want to go through the textbooks to see what the schools have been teaching. Only guidelines won’t do, we must be practical,” said chairman of the confederation, B N Patnaik, while admitting that children carried heavy school bags.
He added, “The CBSE issued a guideline that said the weight of the school bags should not exceed 4 kg, provided the children use NCERT books. But is the NCERT able to provide all the textbooks? If children don’t have access to NCERT textbooks, they have to use many other textbooks,” Patnaik said.