Weight of school bag to be reduced from next academic year

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The weight of students' bags will be reduced in the coming days in the State.

It may be noted that the then School Education Minister Deepak Kesarkar had decided to add pages of notebooks to the textbooks some years ago. The notebook pages were added to the textbooks of standard second to eighth from the academic year 2023-24.

The students also carried notebooks with the textbooks. The students were experiencing the heavy weight of the bag. The pages of the textbooks were not used as per the expectation and most of the pages appeared mostly blank. The quality of the pages was also not good.

The teachers' unions demanded that if the Government wanted to reduce the weight of students, reduce the syllabus first and give sufficient to teachers to complete it. When the issues were raised with the Education Department, a study was carried out. The State Government recently issued orders stating to withdraw the decision.

The textbooks will be available for students without the blank pages from the academic year 2025-26.

Founder of the Akhil Bhartiya Urdu Shikshak Sangh Sajid Nisar Ahmed, said that the purpose of this scheme was to reduce the burden of school bags, but students were carrying books and notebooks along with them.

“It was causing problems for the children. If the burden is to be reduced, the syllabus should be reduced and teachers should be given time to complete the syllabus, otherwise, non-academic work will have to be stopped,” he asserted.