The weight of children's school bags

[helenbrister]

Health and safety protects adults by ensuring they're not lifting heavy weights, but it seems there are no rules to protect our children. Carrying more than 10% of their body weight increases pain, curvature of the spine and disc compression, but no one seems to be bothered about this.

Children are tired and have terrible postural habits as they struggle everyday with lifting a bag which is too heavy for them also carrying it incorrectly.

I wonder if you know why it is this way for our children, surely if anyone should be protected it should be them, they are our future (as the song says), the back pain numbers in adults are huge with it costing governments and us millions, so why are they not recognising this problem and setting a limit on the weight our children can carry?

This shows our children that carrying heavy weight is not acceptable and that their back care and posture is crucial to their health and wellbeing and would confirm that parents are not fussing and with this one rule schools would immediately have to review their processes and allow text books to stay in the classroom and for online resources to be used for homework.

It is all possible now, it just needs our governments to set this one rule and everything else would follow, what do you think?

[karenacoyle]

Hello Helen

Thank you for raising a very important issue which has the potential to negatively affect the back health of our children into the future.

As you also mention, it is not only the weight of these bags that can impact negatively but also the way in which they are carried, often over one shoulder or in the crook of their elbow which can place undue strain on the child's spine.

You are right in saying that it is something that needs to be reviewed and perhaps legislation enacted or at very least some recommendations issued at national level, to help schools manage this problem in a co-ordinated way.

It is hoped that the increasing popularity of tablets and other IT memory devices which are now so compact and light, may do away with the need to have to carry so many text books to school daily and thus help to alleviate this problem.

It would be great to see more awareness raised about this issue and I do think that parents have the power and influence to effectively campaign on this topic by lobbying their MPs and local education authorities.

I hope that you get lots of other comments and positive support for this important issue.

Briege Coyle
Healh Visitor
Netmum Parent Supporter

[helenbrister]

Hello Briege

Thank you for the reply it is much appreciated.

I have started to raise awareness and campaign which I hope will at least highlight there is an urgent issue here which needs to be reviewed.

Tablets as you mention are certainly an option, but a costly one as infrastructure such as wi-fi needs to cover the whole of the school and then of course the cost of the tablets. A study in Scotland with teenagers who were unable to sleep showed the effects of wi-fi affecting their electro-magnectic field which affected sleeping, so I do have my reservations with using tablets all the time.

But certainly all publishers have eBooks which schools can purchase for £250 each for unlimited number of children and can be viewed online at home, when you compare schools could be paying £200 per book, this is an option. From GCSE all books are available as eBooks for pupils/parents to buy. It just seems no one has time to review things and certainly parents aren't aware of the options.

So thank you for your support and I too hope more parents help to raise awareness to the governments that carrying heavy school books should be a thing of the past with some urgency.

All the best
Helen