BENGALURU: Sambhrama Shanivara (Celebration Saturday) will make a comeback to government schools from this academic year. The Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT) announced that schools across the state have been instructed to restart the initiative. It was launched in 2019 under then education minister S Suresh Kumar, making one Saturday of a month bag-free for students.
The former minister had stated that the initiative was to encourage creativity in students through activities like playing, singing or listening to stories apart from learning through textbooks. In this context, DSERT has also released ten modules for teachers that can be taught to students without the need for textbooks.
“It has been ordered to celebrate one Saturday as a bag-free day every month with the aim of making the children learn lessons cheerfully, without burdening them on the subject and giving them a pleasant learning experience. Ten self-explanatory modules for students in various subjects and a guide for teachers to develop civic consciousness by engaging children in multi-faceted activities has been released,” DSERT said in a notification.
To ensure that the initiative is implemented properly, DSERT has also ordered reports to be given and progress meetings to be undertaken at the district, block and cluster level to study the effects of the initiative. Meanwhile, district and block officials have also been tasked with visiting schools to ensure that the initiative is being observed.