A press conference held by two seventh grade students has created a buzz in Maharashtra. In consequence, state government decided to scrutinise the complaint closely and released a report stating that as many as 5 lakh school bags were checked in over 28,000 schools of the state.
Detailed investigation:
- Out of one lakh schools, 28,000 schools were put under the scanner and came out clean
- From these schools, around 5 lakh school bags were checked and the weight of 4.76 lakh bags were found within the weight-limit
- Following the detection, the state declared a report that 90.1 per cent school bags were within the permissible weight limits
Region wise distribution of data:
- Four districts, including Nandurbar, Hingoli, Ratnagiri and Washim, were given the clean chit
- Pune, however, failed to create a 100 per cent record, with 89.37 bags under the standard weight
- A convincing figure if 93 per cent was recorded in Chandrapur district, where students complained about excess weight
- Sharad Gosavi, the deputy director of education (primary), claimed that in this whole process, over 5,200 education officials had inspected school bags
- He also mentioned the criteria of measuring a school bag. According to the HC norms, the weight of the bag must not exceed one-tenth of the body weight of the student,” he said
What do the parents have to say about this report?
- Parents are puzzled to find that only 10 per cent school bags violated the norm
- “Suppose there is an English class, there are at least four books for it like grammar, dictation book, dictionary and so on. Should the teacher not specify which one to carry? She insists the students carry all books,” said a parent to the Indian Express
- “In the last one year, notebooks were replaced with files and school started asking students to keep books in class desks.”
- source”gsmarena”