Saudi Gazette report RIYADH – The Ministry of Education is testing its Healthy School Bag program at select elementary schools. The program, titled “Toward A Healthy School Bag Program for Students,” is part of the ministry's goal to look after all major aspects of students' lives and address any academic, health, scientific and social problems they face, according to a senior ministry official. Abdurahman Al-Barak, deputy minister of education, said the ministry's plan aims at ensuring that the weight of school bags does not exceed 10 percent of the student's physical weight, Al-Riyadh local daily reported. “A study carried out by the ministry showed that 43.7 percent of elementary school students carry bags weighing more than 10 percent of their body weight. The ministry's move to introduce an ideal bag system aims at ensuring the safety of students in all respects and achieve the global average weight for school bags,” he said adding that the experimental scheme has already been implemented at 11 elementary schools in Jeddah. “Several other schools have been chosen for experimental implementation of the scheme before the beginning of the current second semester of the academic year. A working team has been tasked to closely follow up the successful implementation and evaluation of the experiment,” he added. Al-Barak said a major highlight of the scheme involves conducting an intensive awareness campaign among guardians of children in this regard. “We conducted several meetings and dissemination of publications to spread this message. There has been very good feedback and we will expand the program to more schools in the future,” Al-Barak.
