Bhubaneswar: The School and Mass Education department, Friday, directed all the District Collectors to submit reports on constitution of squads to check weight of school bags.
The department’s joint secretary PK Mishra, in his letter to all the Collectors, said that the department had issued repeated instructions earlier to constitute squads at district levels vide the orders of District Collector with the DEOs/DPCs as chairman and BEOs/DCPOs/Police officers/any other officers/NGOs, as the District Collector may decide, as members of the squad to visit schools including all private schools to verify their compliance on the guidelines for reduction of weight of school bags and instruction of Ministry of Human Resource Development’s (MHRD).
“All complaints on violation of any of the provisions must be verified by the squad and report needed to be submitted to the respective directors and department as well. But till date no action-taken report has been received regarding constitution of squad in your district and action taken after constitution of squads,” said the letter.
“You are therefore requested again to kindly furnish the required information/reports by February 20, 2020,” it added.
Earlier, in August 2019, the state government had directed the Collectors to constitute squads to check weight of school bags.
As per the MHRD guidelines, the maximum weight of school bags for the students of Classes I and II should be less than 1.5 kg and those of Classes III to V should be less than 3 kg. Likewise, the school bag weight should not exceed 4 kg for Classes VI and VII, 4.5 kg for Classes VIII and IX and 5 kg for Class X.
The department had written a letter to the director of Elementary Education, Odisha, for revoking the curriculum developed by CISCE and follow the curriculum of NCERT.
Meanwhile, Odisha Abhibhabaka Mahasangha (OAM) had also written to the Collectors for implementing guidelines for reduction on weight of school bags and use of NCERT books in all private English medium schools in Khurda district.
Basudev Bhatt of OAM said, “The Mahasangha has been demanding reduction of school bag weight in private schools of Odisha since 2016. We also demand implementation of rule of using NCERT books instead of private publisher books from this year. It is high time these orders are implemented. We will gherao the DEO office February 27 if the officer fails to implement the order in Khurda district.”