AGARTALA, August 25 (TIWN): The Centre may soon come up with a new guideline to ‘lighten the burden of school children’, which includes asking schools to frame a well designed timetable for each section so that children need not carry too many books to school each day. The issue was recently taken up in the newly formed Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) meeting attended by the State minister for higher education Tapan Chakroborty.

Being proposed by the central government to lighten the burden of school children aiming to facilitate them, the Tripura Left front government has come up with a suggestion that only the text books may be carried to school. “We have a received a letter from the Union Ministry as a suggestion or proposal to lighten the burden of school children,” said State higher education minister Tapan Chakroborty.

The government suggested that according to the new norm if the students leave their books in school and returns home and again use the books in the next day than it would cause problem for the slow learners.

“We support the proposal of lightning of burden of school children by the centre but it must match the ground reality as the slow learner needs to study at home and secondly the schools in the rural areas or the tribal areas of the state are unguarded,” Chakroborty said.

Chakroborty said, “The growing weight of school bags and its effect on the health of children has become a matter of grave concern for parents. There is a need to forge partnerships among curriculum developers, school functionaries, parents and other stakeholders in this regard.”

“We demand only text books to be carried by the students in schools and not the note books because heavy burden affects one’s health and the spinal cord,” Chakroborty further pointed out.