BHOPAL: Two and half months after Congress governed Chhattisgarh, the neighbouring BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh too has decided to introduce “a day without bags every week” concept strictly in all its government and private schools.
A detailed order by the MP School Education Department released recently, contains a set of guidelines in line with the central government’s November 2020 School Bag Policy for effective implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The set of guidelines issued by the MP school education department’s August 30 order reads, “One day every week will be No School Bags Day. Activities pertaining to vocational work experience would be conducted in every school on the bag less day.”
Earlier, in June this year, the Chhattisgarh government too had decided to introduce the ‘day without school bag concept in all schools,’ with the larger purpose of ensuring better attendance in schools.
The August 30 guidelines issued by the MP school education department further contained a detailed maximum school bag (along with books) weight chart for Class I to Class XII. While the maximum weight of school bags (including the school diary) has been fixed between 1.6 kg and 2.2 kg for Class I and Class II, the weight for Class III to Class V has been fixed at 1.7 kg to 2.5 kg, weight of 2 kg to 3 kg for Class VI to VII, 2.5 kg to 4 kg weight for Class VIII and 2.5 kg to 4 kg for Class IX and Class X. The school bag weight for students of Class XI and Class XII will be determined by the respective school management based on the subject stream opted by students.
The order also asked schools to ensure that books not more than those prescribed by the government or the NCERT are kept in the bags.
"Schools will have to display bag weight charts on the notice board and in the classrooms and school diary should also be included in the bag weight. School management committee has to prepare timetables for students so that they are not required to bring all the books daily and their school bag weight does not cross the given limit," the notification read.
Schools have also been asked to keep practice books, workbooks and other important items for students until Class VIII in the classrooms only.
The order containing the 11-point guidelines directed all district education officers (DEOs) in the state to get it implemented across all schools in their respective districts with immediate effect. Each DEO will be responsible for randomly selecting schools for surprise checks on implementation of the school bag weight related guidelines once every three months.
The order further provides for limiting the homework burden on students. Students up to Class II will not be given any homework, the homework will not exceed two hours every week for students of Class III to Class V, not more than one hours homework daily for Class VI to Class VIII students, while maximum daily homework for students of Class IX to Class XII should not exceed two hours duration.
The two page order further mentioned that subjects like Computer, Moral Education, General Science, Health, Physical Education, Sports and Arts should be taught without books and school bags should be light and fit on the shoulders of students.