The Burden of Bags: Why Heavy School Loads Persist Despite Reform Promises

Aditya*, a Class 8 student, carries several textbooks for the same subject to school, seven for Hindi alone, adding that some of them are not used at all during the term. He sits through nine classes in school everyday, with books and notebooks for all.

His mother, Apoorva*, says the school in Noida, affiliated with the CBSE board, has added extra books to the curriculum under the guise of promoting critical thinking and analysis, calling it little more than a way to extract additional money from parents.

“The bag is nowhere close to 10 per cent of my body weight,” Aditya resolutely said. He laughed it off when asked whether he has any bagless days.

In a parliamentary reply, the government of India said that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 recommends that all students will participate in a 10-day bagless period during Grades 6-8 where they intern with local experts such as carpenters, gardeners, potters, artists etc.

“These guidelines aim at providing children of classes 6-8 an exposure to skill education using experiential learning pedagogy and to make learning at schools joyful and stress free,” it stated. 

Furthermore, the government also formed a class-wise range for the ratio for school bags as 10 per cent of the body weight as suggested in School Bag Policy. Apoorva questioned the relevance of such a standard, asking how the body weight benchmark for one student could possibly apply to all. She remarked that a single measure cannot suit everyone.“One glove cannot fit all,” she said. 

However, the reality of how many books the students are carrying seems to be different as the policy might just be on paper. 

“This entire issue exists because of education being in the concurrent list,” said Dr. Ramanand, Director of Center of Policy Research and Governance. 

The majority of the students in India are enrolled in schools and curriculum that are managed by states, he said, adding that “the training for those schools is also done by the SCERT. So, in a way, the entire structure of the school is transferred to the state.”

He said the Centre can at best oversee its implementation, while it is the state government that determines the school curriculum and its norms, and this is where the issue of heavy school bags arises.

The discussion on school bags and associated learning is not new. It was discussed in the 1993 Yash Pal Committee Report on ‘Learning without Burden’.

The committee was constituted to advise on enhancing the quality of learning while easing the burden on school students. Identifying joyless learning, fear of examinations, an excessive reliance on textbooks, and an overloaded syllabus as key curriculum concerns, it proposed a range of reforms.

Finding the issues in the education system, the report stated that it can be identified briefly by saying that "a lot is taught, but little is learnt or understood". While the problem manifests itself in a variety of ways, the most common and striking manifestation is the size of the school bag. 

“A survey conducted in Delhi revealed that the weight of school bag, on an average, in primary classes in public schools is more than 4 kg while it is around 1 kg in MCD schools,” it said. 

The reforms suggested by the report stated greater teacher involvement in curriculum design and textbook preparation, restricting the Central Board of Secondary Education to Kendriya and Navodaya Vidyalayas while placing other schools under state boards, maintaining a 1:30 pupil–teacher ratio and introducing subject-specific curriculum improvements.

“We are obsessed with the notion that there is only one way to learn, which is through books,” Ramanand said. “We are not open about other ways of learning, which is why children's creativity is stifled.”

Zaira*, a mother of another student in class 8th who goes to a school in Delhi, said that not much has changed in terms of book-based learning since her school ended decades ago. 

She said her son worries about being reprimanded and insists on carrying all his books and additional notebooks to school to avoid being caught without the required material.

Zaira said there is no concept of bagless days and questioned why there has been so little progress in technology-enabled learning, adding that in a “digital India”, students should not be subjected to such heavy reliance on books.

Echoing Zaira’s concerns of technology being integrated in learning, Ramanand pointed to a deeper problem in the education system and the structural understanding of it.

“A bag is not just a bag, it is a mental blockage. The child should feel what they're going to learn today,” he said, adding that if the class needs to learn traffic rules, one can simply arrange a visit to the traffic police on a small local road. “Why do you want to teach them on a smart board or a blackboard?”

He said the problem in the education system also arises with the bureaucratic mindset. “Sometimes, even our educationists start thinking like bureaucrats, which needs to change for transformation in the education system to occur.”

While maintaining that the initiatives outlined in the NEP are significant, he said their effective implementation is equally crucial. A school bag, he observed, gradually becomes part of a child’s identity and is carried into adult life, associated with confidence, a sense of completeness in formal settings, and being perceived as responsible. 

He concluded that this mindset needs to be reshaped at an early stage.

*Names have been changed to maintain anonymity.