In a significant development, the Jammu and Kashmir government has done away with formal textbooks and school bags for pre-primary students at the schools.

A notification issued by Principal Secretary School Education, Asgar Hassan Samoon late on Wednesday also directed schools that no homework is assigned to students upto 2nd standard.

The new rules issued in the notification, which amended Rule8 of the Jammu and Kashmir School Education Act 2002, ordered school heads to provide a maximum of two notebooks/workbooks to pre-primary students instead of formal textbooks.Furthermore, the notebooks are to be kept in the custody of the teachers in the school itself.

“Students of pre-primary level are not asked to carry any bag except light carrier for lunch box,” read the new rules.The new rules have also specified prescription of subjects from 1st standard to 7th with Language and Arithmetic for standards 1st and 2nd, Language, Environmental Science andArithmetic for standards 3rd-5th, and Language, Social Sciences, Mathematicsand Science for 6th and 7th standard or as prescribed by the affiliatingauthority (the concerned board to which a school is affiliated).

The maximum permissible weight of the school bags fordifferent classes has also been fixed under the new rules.While there will beno school bag for pre-primary students, the weight of a school bag for standard1st and 2nd should not exceed 1.5 kg.Likewise, the permissible weight of schoolbags has been fixed as 3 kg, 4 kg, 5 kg and 5.5 kg for standards 3rd -5th,6th-7th, 8th-9th and 10th classes.

“Students shall not be asked to bring additional books andextra material to school,” the new rules read.

They warned that the government may cancel affiliation andrecognition of the school violating the provisions.