CBSE tries to make schoolbags lighter

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai: Here’s a piece of good news for children groaning under the weight of huge schoolbags. CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi has issued a circular to the board’s schools across the country, asking them to implement a slew of measures in order to lighten the bags, especially in the primary section.

From ensuring that unnecessary textbooks are not prescribed by schools to re-designing the timetable so that soft skills are interspersed with academic subjects, the board has prescribed a slew of solutions to heavy schoolbags.

According to the CBSE circular, the number of prescribed textbooks for a particular class should not exceed the number prescribed by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) for that class. The circular adds that “schools should ensure strict compliance with the number of books prescribed so that students and parents are not burdened academically or financially’’.

The board has also asked schools to maintain the bags of children up to Std II in the institute itself and suggested the setting up a class library, which can lend texts to students who have forgotten their books at home.

The circular goes on to discuss a more modern pedagogy of education in order to lighten schoolbags. These include integrating soft skills with “main course teaching’’, using interesting alternatives to homework and adopting a continuous as well as comprehensive method of evaluation.

“There’s a lot that needs to be done when it comes to reducing the load children carry to school. Several private schools insist on a number of unnecessary books. When I recently went to a book shop and asked for an NCERT text, I was immediately offered a whole range of workbooks, which were double the price of the textbook,’’ said Anita Rampal, Delhi University professor in the department of education and chairperson of the NCERT’s primary textbook development committee.

Rampal said though the NCERT policy clearly stated that only languages and math should be taught in Std I and II, several CBSE schools—both private as well as Kendriya Vidyalayas—often insisted on teaching environmental science in these classes and even prescribe textbooks for the same. “This is against the NCERT policy,’’ she adds.

Schools have welcomed the move to lighten schoolbags. “They need to implement the policy more effectively and come up with alternatives to textbooks—such as worksheets and creative activities—in the classroom,’’ said Dr K B Kushal, director of the DAV group of schools.

Heavy schoolbags have been a concern for a long time,’’ said Avnita Bir, principal of RN Podar School in Santa Cruz. Bir, however, pointed out that it wasn’t just the content of a schoolbag that was to blame. “The shape of schoolbags that are currently used causes an imbalance in the distribution of weight,’’ she added. Students whom TOI spoke to said the CBSE move was a step in the right direction.

anahita.mukherji@timesgroup.com