Overweight school bags have been a serious and pressing issue for a long time. Ministry of Education has finally announced that they have developed a number of solutions to address the problem.
According to the announcement made by the Ministry of Education, the programme to address this problem will be divided into two phases, with the first phase to be implemented this year and the second phase to be implemented next year.
First phase will see the construction of lockers for Primary 1 to Primary 3, where students will be able to store books in lockers in their classrooms. The project will cost about RM37.3 million and involve 323,186 students in 10,662 classes.
In the second phase, lockers will be built for Primary 4 to 6 where there is an afternoon session and students will be able to store their books in the lockers, thus reducing the problem of carrying them home. In primary schools without morning and afternoon sessions, students will be able to keep their books in desk drawers.
In addition, Ministry of Education will revise the curriculum so that only three to four subjects are taught in a day and give schools flexibility in preparing their schedules. Ministry of Education will also limit the number of exercise books to not more than two per subject and not more than 80 pages each.
Schools will be required to use only the workbooks provided by the Ministry of Education and activity books will only be used as extra-curricular reference books.
