Bengaluru – To reduce the heavy backpack of school-going children, the government has decided to split the syllabus into two sets of text books.

Disclosing this to press persons at his office here yesterday, Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Tanveer Sait said that all text books from 1st to 8th std. would be split into sets of two text books and will be implemented from the coming academic year.

He further said that the first set of text books would be distributed in June and the balance in September / October. He pointed out that with single text books in each subject, the students used to carry a heavy backpack which had invited public criticism which prompted to split the text books into two.

Continuing, Tanveer Sait said that the weight of the school backpack would be halved by the decision and added that free text books, uniforms, shoes and bicycles would be distributed to government and aided school children in the first week of June. He further said that for the first time chudidar uniforms would be distributed to girl students.

Flip-side

However, according to sources, the decision has been taken by the government owing to non-availability of paper for printing the text books. The drought in State is said to have affected paper production also resulting in the price of paper per tonne going up from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 67,000. Though the burden on the back of a student may come down it will become ‘heavy’ on the government with extra expenditure, opine sources.