ONE of the first few initiatives by the new Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik was the setting up of an official online form for public feedback and suggestions on Malaysia’s education system.
Among the main issues that various parties have raised is the heavy school bag and health risks arising from carrying one. It also forms the most number of complaints received where parents voiced out their concern that their children’s school bags, especially those from primary schools, are getting heavier.
Students burdened with heavy school bags is not a recent problem, but, a long-standing complaint. Many parents blamed the textbooks and workbooks that the pupils have to carry as the main reason. Teachers, however, said school bags will not be heavy if one packs them as per the timetable.
In 2000 and 2014, the ministry had instructed schools to discontinue workbooks for Year One and Two pupils, while the rest in primary school are limited to one additional workbook each for Bahasa Melayu, English, Mandarin, Mathematics and Science subjects. However, the problem persisted.
Early this year, the Education Ministry completed its report on the heavy bag issue based on a study conducted in 2017 in both urban and rural areas.
At a press conference, Dr Maszlee revealed that only 28 per cent of a bag’s weight were from the textbooks. The remainder 72 per cent included the bag itself, together with stationery, uniforms and food, among others.
Among the solutions he proposed as being most realistic, and to minimise the number of books in the bag, is an enquiry-based education concept in schools. He added it can be implemented because it does not involve any cost and would facilitate students and teachers.
However, it might not be as straightforward as we think. There is a need to ensure all teachers “speak the same language” when using a new standardised approach during their lessons and this can only be done via effective professional training and workshops.
The minister also announced that from 2019, schools would have to follow a ministry circular with guidelines on this matter.
One common advice that has always been suggested is to keep the bag’s weight under 10 per cent of the child’s body weight. Another is to make sure the child carries only what is needed by doing a small “spot check” each day.
In identifying these guidelines, it is vital to remember that lugging heavy school bags to school daily is not unique to this country. It has also long been an issue of concern in other parts of the world.
In Hong Kong, for instance, overweight school bags and the impact they can have on children has been acknowledged for years. Many years down the road the problem is still weighing heavily without much improvement.
As early as 1998, the then education chief of the country promised a series of measures to tackle the situation — from installing lockers in schools to encouraging publishers to break up materials into volumes and developing habits when packing bags. The ministry also formulated a strategy to resolve the issue by implementing several immediate measures, including drawing up guidelines and recommendations for students, teachers, parents and schools. Schools and parents are also given advice on reducing what their children carry to school each day.
However, the latest survey showed that the guidelines only existed on paper. Figures showed that the weight of school bags from a survey of 900 pupils was the worst in 10 years. According to a report in South China Morning Post in October last year, the school bags weighed an average 4.9kg, 63 per cent heavier than recommended.
The findings have raised questions over the effectiveness of the government guidelines that had advised pupils not to carry bags which exceeded one tenth of their body weight. Today, the issue continues to weigh down students with no obvious solutions in sight.
In this day and age where everything has gone digital, there needs to be solutions to lessen the children’s load.
The use of more e-learning materials and digital textbooks is an obvious way forward. But, the results still leave much to be desired.
The digitalisation of school textbooks was proposed in three phases as stipulated in the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025.
In 2014, 25,000 Year Five pupils in Terengganu received electronic textbooks via laptops from the state government to replace school bags.
Rightfully, the second phase (2016-2020) involves producing interactive textbooks for select subjects, which will contain elements of text, graphics, audio visual and animation. The third phase (2021-2025) will see the publication of digital textbooks for all subjects, including for students with special needs.
Of course, technology alone cannot be the total solution. Hoping that technology will provide all the answers is probably unwise.
Maybe, for a start, parents should make sure that when getting a bag for their children, the bag by itself is not weighty. That is the most important factor — the weight of the bag. This, however, could be a challenge for parents. Children often have their own ideas about their school bags and what their friends have to say matters the most.
The writer, who left her teaching career more than 20 years ago to take on different challenges beyond the conventional classroom, is NSTP’s education editor for English content.
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