VIJAYAWADA: After Telangana Government’s recent order asking all the schools to cut the school bag weight and limit the number of books, the AP government is coming up with a similar initiative. Rather than restricting the number of books and home work, the State Education department is coming with proper infrastructure facility in schools so that the students can store their books in lockers.
The State Education Department is planning to come up improved infrastructure facilities in all government schools across the State in the coming months. As part of cutting down the weight of school bags, the department is focused on providing locker facilities and shelves in schools to all students.
Speaking to Express, Principal Secretary of Education department Adityanath Das said, “We don’t think a single order can stop children from carrying heavy bags. The government is planning to provide shelves, desks and lockers to every student in schools.”
“We are coming up with full-fledged infrastructure in all government schools, from lockers to toilets, compound walls to shelves. For this, we are spending `1,000 crore and soon the facilities will come up in all schools and students can keep their books in the lockers and take only a few with them. This will cut the burden of carrying heavy bags without affecting the academics. Also, we will ask the private schools to provide lockers to the students soon.”
In fact, in Andhra Pradesh, a 10 year-old children studying in class 5 is carrying a bag weighing around 8 kg whereas usually they weigh about 20-24 kgs. Their bag contains textbooks of English, Hindi, Telugu, Mathematics, EVS, Social studies, Computer science and General Knowledge.
Also, the set of two notebooks of 200 pages for each subject excluding Computer science and General Knowledge.
Apart from these, they also have workbooks, copy writing books, diary, examination books etc. Thus, the children carry almost 40 books regularly to their schools.For students studying in higher classes, the number of books go upto 60 including workbooks given in private schools.
Where else in government schools, the number of books will go upto 50 for a student in the higher classes.
“At the time of admissions, the private schools managements said that they have got locker facilities in their campus. Later, it was found that the lockers were very small where hardly less than 5-6 books can fit in and even they are not in a proper working condition,” said L Yasodha, parent
“I feel sad to see my children carrying bags that weigh over 5-8 kgs every day. The government should clearly instruct those managements to provide better furniture and lockers,” said Yasodha.