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Quality Improvement in Budding Buds Sr. Sec. School by REDUCING BAG LOAD OF CHILDREN

 

REDUCING BAG LOAD OF CHILDREN AT BUDDING BUDS

 

Since the last several years the issue of weight of school bag was a matter of National debate. Way back in 1992 a National Advisory Committee was set up by the Government under the chairmanship of Prof. Yash Pal, former Chairman of the UGC to suggest ways and means to reduce academic burden on school students. The Committee popularly known as ‘Yash Pal Committee’, submitted its report in July 1993. On receipt of the Committee''s report, a Group was set up on 25-8-1993 under the chairmanship of Shri Y. N. Chaturvedi, Additional Secretary, Department of Education to examine the feasibility of implementing the recommendations made in the report of ‘Yash Pal Committee’. The Group submitted its report on 5-10-1993 and so on and so forth ………..……

 

This continued and in the absence of any concrete solution and stricter guidelines for compliance from CABE or MHRD or CBSE, etc., the bag load of children kept on increasing over the years.

 

Finally CBSE issued very valuable circulars vide no. 07/2006 dated 04-05-2006, no. 21/2007 dated 17-04-2007 and no. 43/08 dated 27-10-2008 on ‘Reducing the bag load on children’.  

 

To achieve this, we just have taken the following steps in our school :

 

1.    Reduce the number of subjects being taught per day.

 

2.Introduce the concept of ‘Block Period’ and thereby allot more duration to one subject per day and thereby reducing the number of days or periods per week, instead of allotting less duration for more number of days or periods per week. The central government controlled Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan also has the opinion that “..…. allotment of 35 to 45 minutes to one subject per day is insufficient to have creative and constructive group discussions or activities”. This will definitely lead to a collaborativelearning approach which will lead to less number of books and more of activities and development through practical approach.

 

3.Make clear indication in the Time Table of the subject(s) to be taught on a particular day so that in subjects like Social Science, Science, English, etc., where more than one text book is prescribed, the students do not have to unnecessarily carry all the books to school.

 

4.Intersperse academic subjects with soft skills and non-scholastic subjects like ‘Art’, ‘Craft’, ‘Physical Education’, ‘Music’, ‘Club Activities’, etc. 

 

5.Exercise books should never be more than 100 pages (including cover) and they should be always soft bound instead of hard bound.

 

6.If required, single exercise book can serve the purpose of class work as well as home work.

 

7.Create awareness amongst parents in checking the bags daily and keeping books and exercise books as per school time table. Spot checking of school bags are also to be done at school, care being taken so that bags of female students are never checked by male teachers.

 

With the abovementioned points in mind suitable steps can be taken, as has been done by us, which ultimately will lead to the drastic minimizing of bag load of children belonging to all classes.