CM asks officials to design ‘weight-loss’ formula

Young schoolchildren staggering under heavy, bulging bags in the morning and after-school hours is a common sight.

Notwithstanding the constant worry of parents at their plight and warnings by doctors that this could lead to serious health issues, sometimes as serious as permanent stoop, poor lung functioning, breathing difficulties and even spinal impairment, the size and weight of the school bag has been increasing by the day.

The good news is that this bulky school bag will soon become a thing of the past as Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has directed officials of the School Education Department to work on a ‘weight-loss’ formula for school bags. In his first review meeting with the Education Department, Mr. Reddy made it clear that radical changes should be brought about to make education “less of a burden” and “more meaningful” for children.

Reform path

Besides mooting ‘No School Bag Day’ on Saturdays, he has asked the officials to design programmes for transformation of the education sector. Every Saturday, as per the Chief Minister’s plan, the children will not have classes. Instead, they will be engaged in day-long fun activities like story-telling, games and sports and innovative learning modules. Infrastructure and quality are the two cornerstones of the Chief Minister’s vision for the department. He wants the officials to focus on filling the gaps in the next two years in order to improve the overall education scenario in the State. “As far as ‘No School Bag Day’ is concerned, the idea is to find out a way to rid the children of heavy bags. For this, we may have to create a facility in the schools to store their books by increasing the storage space. We are thinking of ways to put it in practice,” said Aditya Nath Das, Principal Secretary, Department of School Education.

He said in their next meeting likely to happen in 3 to 4 days, they are expected to lay down their plans on improving the education scenario based on the Chief Minister’s suggestions.

The ‘No School Bag Day’ concept has not gone down well with all sections.

A few teachers of municipal schools where this policy is being implemented since last year, say that the purpose of the programme has failed.

‘Purpose defeated’

“In the absence of proper implementation of the programme, the very purpose of it is defeated. Teachers work on projects and pass them as their students work. In a few schools in rural areas, parents complain that their wards are not being taught lessons as teachers ‘waste’ time in games and other activities,” said S. Ramakrishna, headmaster of the Municipal Corporation High School, Gujjanagundla, Guntur.

‘Wrong signal’

He said it also comes handy for private schools to ‘propagate’ that children are not taught lessons but are only made to play in government and municipal schools.