School bans wheeled bags for pupils

A PRIMARY school has banned pupils from dragging heavy wheeled suitcases containing their textbooks to school, after concerns about their health.

The Shanghai Experimental School, one of the key elementary schools in Pudong New Area, has banned the overloaded bags from this semester.

Instead, the school has set aside a bookshelf for each pupil in their classrooms. Students can store textbooks at school and don't need to drag them to and from home.

Parents who give their children wheeled bags will be asked to cooperate with teachers in reducing the weight of students' school bags, officials said.

"The biggest concern is children's healthy growth," Fan Li, vice director of the experimental school's primary education department, told Shanghai Daily yesterday. "Heavy school bags are really no good for their physical development."

The suitcases often weigh about one kilogram and children have trouble dragging them up stairs.

"Bags on wheels take up a lot of classroom space, which could lead to accidents on campus," she said, adding that children were strongly advised to make full use of classroom shelves.

However, overloaded school bags are still a big headache for many students and parents.

An ongoing survey on an education Website suggests the average bag carried by primary students weighs about four kilograms.

Chen Weiya, mother of a boy in the third grade, said her son was asked to carry not only textbooks for all courses each day but also dictionaries, exercise books, painting tools and water bottles.

"Since not every school can afford storage space, we still have to use a wheeled suitcase," Chen said.