PETALING JAYA: To address the difficulty of heavy school bags, the Education Ministry can be offering lockers for pupils in double-session primary schools, beginning with pupils in Years One, Two and Three this 12 months.

An allocation of RM37.3mil has been put aside to present lockers for a complete of 323,186 decrease primary pupils from 10,662 courses, says Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin.

The second section of the locker initiative is predicted to begin in 2023, which is able to see the availability of lockers prolonged to Years Four, Five and Six pupils in double-session schools.

“After finding out the difficulty of heavy school bags intimately, the ministry discovered that the issue is crucial amongst primary school pupils, notably Year One to Year Three pupils.

“This is a brand new strategy because the Education Ministry is offering lockers to college students for the primary time ever.

“However for single-session schools, college students will preserve books contained in the desk drawers of their respective lecture rooms,” stated Radzi in a video posted to his Facebook web page on Sunday (March 6).

The locker initiative is without doubt one of the seven holistic options devised by the Education Ministry to overcome the difficulty of heavy schoolbags, which has been ongoing for nearly three a long time, stated Radzi.

Other measures taken to remedy the difficulty of heavy schoolbags embrace the reorganisation of timetables to solely three to 4 topics a day and giving schools the pliability to present a timetable in accordance to a weekly rotational system.

The weekly timetable rotational system can be in a position to reduce the variety of textbooks and exercise books introduced by college students to school day by day, stated Radzi.

The variety of train books has additionally been restricted to two per topic, with every train e-book not exceeding greater than 80 pages, stated Radzi.

“During our visits to the schools, we discovered that many college students have been carrying greater than two train books for one topic,” he stated.

Another measure being applied by the ministry to sort out the difficulty of heavy schoolbags is to restrict the kind of exercise books and workbooks utilized by college students.

Radzi stated college students are solely allowed to use the exercise e-book offered by the Education Ministry whereas workbooks can solely be used as reference supplies exterior of official instructing and studying (PdP) occasions.

The ministry can also be taking the strategy of embracing digital textbooks by persevering with to publish new textbooks within the digital format, stated Radzi.

“To date, a complete of 692 titles of digital textbooks have been uploaded within the Digital Educational Learning Initiative Malaysia (DELIMa) platform.

“Pupils who’ve the system can entry digital textbooks via the DELIMa platform,” he stated.

Teachers are additionally inspired to use a student-centred PdP strategy equivalent to thematic, modular and project-based studying, digital lab or various studying, he stated.

“The ministry has additionally mentioned with the Islamic Development Department (Jakim) to permit college students to attend spiritual courses in school uniform to scale back the gadgets that they carry of their bag,” added Radzi.

He additionally expressed hopes that the initiatives outlined can be in a position to scale back the issue of heavy school bags, as it’s a longstanding matter.

The ministry had additionally prior to now performed three main research associated to the difficulty in 1994, 2008 and 2017 in addition to taken numerous actions to address the difficulty, stated Radzi.

This included issuing a round on the usage of workbooks in primary schools in 2000 and likewise tips on coping with heavy schoolbags in 2018 but the issue nonetheless continued, he stated.

“To make sure that each strategy is applied as greatest as potential to scale back the issue of heavy school bags, the ministry will intently monitor the implementation of all of the approaches outlined.

“The monitoring can be carried out by a job power that can periodically report on the implementation of the outlined initiatives,” he stated.

He added that the ministry will even proceed to improve shut cooperation with dad and mom and guardians on fixing the difficulty, notably in guaranteeing college students carry the books as required by their respective schedules.

“In addition, engagement periods with the Parents and Teachers Association will even be enhanced,” he stated.