NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has recommended a slew of measures to reduce the weight of school bags children carry.
The suggestions include making month wise books with relevant chapters of all the subjects-that will be taught in a particular month-- in lower classes and making changes in the Right to Education Act, 2009 to ensure that children are not made to carry more than 10 per cent of the their body weight in their bags.
The recommendations that are being submitted to the Union Human Resource Development Ministry also talk about charting ideal classroom time tables-which do not have each subject every day and also ask NCERT to specify thickness of pages of books as well as notebooks.
"We have been carrying out the consultations for over a year in this regard as this important aspect of school education needs be taken up at the national level," Priyank Kanoongo, NCPCR member (education) told TNIE.
The suggestions also say that reading materials in schools should be made available to classes instead of individual kids and teachers in private schools should properly be trained to focus on all-round development of kids instead of just emphasising on textbooks.
The Commission has also said that schools should not ask children to buy or carry books outside NCERT or SCERT syllabi.
Sources in the HRD Ministry conceded that despite a Bombay High Court directive in 2006 which said that students should not be made to carry bags of over 1/10th of their body weight, which was based on scientific analysis, there are no concrete measures to ensure that in schools.
The Central Board of Secondary Education, in guidelines issued in 2016, however had asked its affiliated schools to take certain steps.
"The guidelines included asking teachers not to penalise students in any way for not bringing textbooks or workbooks and telling schools not to give homework in lower classes," an official said.
"Also as the government has initiated the process of reducing syllabus by giving more emphasis on extra -curricular activities-the issue will get resolved from the next academic session," he stressed.
Some southern states, on the other hand, have initiated measures to cap school bag weight through administrative orders.
Last year, Telangana had capped school bag weight for primary, upper primary, secondary and senior secondary sections and Karnataka government this year invited suggestions from students themselves on how the burden of bags can be reduced.