Heavy School Bags: Special Squad Finds No Deviation In Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: The special squad, set up by the Odisha Government to check the weight of the school bags in English medium schools, on Wednesday visited some institutes here and carried out random checks.

A team member told reporters that so far, they haven’t come across incidents of overweight school bags.

“We conducted random checks of the school bags and the NCERT books which the schools need to follow. We did not find any deviations,” the member said after visiting SAI International School here. The team also appeared content with the provisions adopted by the school such as locker system for the students and providing water in the school itself instead of the students having to carry the heavy bottles from home.

The squad also visited DAV School, Chandrasekharpur and ODM Public School. It will inspect some more schools on Thursday.

The HRD Ministry in a communication last year, had urged the states to formulate guidelines to regulate the teaching of subjects and weight of school bags.

It said the weight of school bags should not exceed 1.5 kg for Class I and II, 2-3 kg for Class III, IV and V and 4.5 kg in Class VIII and IX and 5 kg for Class X.