Lighter School Bags, No Homework Is Not The Reality On Ground, Say Parents

The ever increasing weight of children’s school bags has always been a matter of concern for the parents and kids, besides the discerning educationists..

In a sensible move, the Ministry of Human Resource Development recently announced a rationalisation of the school syllabus and prescribed the maximum weight of student bags.

Classes 1 & 2 should not be more than 1.5kg, Classes III to V would be between 2kg and 3kg, for VI and VII it should be 4kg, and for Classes VIII and IX 4.5kg, and class X at 5kg.

The letter issued by the Centre to States, Union territories and Education boards stated that there will be no homework for Classes 1 & 2 also no other subjects apart from languages and mathematics.

Pune365 spoke to parents teachers and students to gauge their views and check on the implementation of these guidelines.

Vikram Mane, Parent shares, “Heavy school bags has always been a worrying issue for both kids and their parents.

The education department issued a certain weight specification of the school bags, however we have seen no change in the weight of the bag. Teachers are also indifferent about the heavy bags for the kids.”

Many school teachers force the children to carry all the books and not according to the timetable in an attempt to complete the portion.

Our kids are also burdened with extra classes on Saturday for which many of them have to compromise on their activity classes.

Speaking to Pune365, Anish, his son says, “teachers initially exchange their periods or most of the time we have free periods, but as soon as we have exams approaching we’re forced to carry every HW and CW, textbook and workbook to carry to school.

The use of workbooks is limited, but everyday we have to carry them to save ourselves from the punishment of extra homework, Anish added

No homework rule makes no sense at all, says Madhuri Panchal, Homemaker and parent.

My daughter is in the first standard and she hates studying when she ‘s back from school and enjoys her time playing.

To decrease the burden they can give oral homework to kids. Also, most of the schools have adopted the pattern of worksheets to reduce the bag weight.

So these make no sense at all. The government has not been very thoughtful about their decision, because if kids are not given any homework in their initial years of schooling it will add up to their stress if they suddenly start having homework.

Moreover, in the third standard, there is an addition of three to four subjects due to which the kids are already stressed. When they get older and start getting given longer essays to write, they are more likely to leave it until the last minute causing them even more stress. Most students are not aware of any smart essay writing service available to them either which causes them to write bad, waffling essays.

Three subjects and homework for even two subjects will add to the stress among kids and hamper their grades.

Urmila Shetty, Teacher and a parent shares, “The news about decreasing the bag weight has been going around for long now, but in reality, there is no change on ground.”

Only a handful of schools have adopted the worksheet manner. Most of the schools still use the old method of education where the kids need to carry textbooks, notebooks and specific workbooks.

Speaking to another student Vedant Gawade, he says, our school follows the basic time table and according to that we carry books. However, our school never does any check on the bag weight.

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#All views expressed in this article are those of the individual respondents and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to them.