The education department has started visiting schools to check the weight of schoolbags by physically weighing the bags.
The education department has started visiting schools to check the weight of schoolbags by physically weighing the bags. Though the step is in accordance with a direction of the high court, as most schools are holding exams, the weight of the bags is not what it is during regular school days, making the exercise futile and irrelevant in the context of the court order.
In their defence, education department officials say they would submit the weights of only those schoolbags from schools that are holding regular classes and not the weight of bags from schools holding exams.
According to a teacher from a suburban school, after the division bench of Justices Abhay Oka and G.S. Kulkarni recently asked the government to give details of schools that have implemented the resolution, the department has been sending its teams of officers to schools to physically weigh the schoolbags.
“The exams have started in most schools in the city and students are not carrying their regular bags,” an education department officer said. “Hence we are facing a huge problem in trying to ascertain how many schools have implemented the resolution as the students only carry books of the subject they have exams for and not all the books,” he added. The officer, however, added that they were taking the weight of those bags too just in case the same was needed.
“How will the officers justify the weight of exam bags as it is just a small per cent of the entire weight. We feel such an exercise is wasteful and unnecessary,” said another teacher from the western suburbs.
B.B. Chavan, deputy director of education, Mumbai region, said, “We have started by visiting random schools. We are also aware of the exams in progress and instructed officers to visit only those schools that have regular classes and get the weight of the bags from there only.”
