{"id":83715,"date":"2018-11-28T11:56:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T18:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=83715"},"modified":"2018-11-28T11:56:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T18:56:39","slug":"bag-limit-is-a-weight-off-pupils-shoulders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/28\/bag-limit-is-a-weight-off-pupils-shoulders\/","title":{"rendered":"Bag limit is a weight off pupils\u2019 shoulders"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Times UK<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>India has set strict weight limits for children\u2019s school bags as part of an initiative to prevent injury and reduce the stress created by the immense pressure to achieve good grades.<\/p>\n<p>The rules, which will be applied nationwide after successful trials in several Indian states, will impose a 1.5kg satchel weight limit on Year 1 and 2 pupils, aged about five or six years old, rising to 5kg for teenagers. Homework has also been stopped for the youngest pupils to spare them from hauling extra books to and from school.<\/p>\n<p>India has the highest youth suicide rate in the world and the new scheme is intended to address years of mounting alarm at the physical and mental toll placed on students by family and social\u00a0<span class=\"paywall-EAB47CFD\">demands for academic success. Schools have found that children are carrying bags weighing a third of their body weight or more, risking long-term injury.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"Article-content paywall-EAB47CFD\">\n<p>The excess weight puts undue stress on the muscles, ligaments and discs and damages them,\u201d Ramneek Mahajan, director of orthopaedic medicine at the Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital in Delhi, told\u00a0<i>The<\/i>\u00a0<i>Times of India<\/i>. Children develop a forward head posture as they are swinging forward at the hip to compensate for the heavy weight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The government is also seeking to streamline the curriculum to create more time in the week for children to enjoy sport and other interests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Times UK India has set strict weight limits for children\u2019s school bags as part of an initiative to prevent injury and reduce the stress created by the immense pressure to achieve good grades. The rules, which will be applied nationwide after successful trials in several Indian states, will impose a 1.5kg satchel weight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}