Parents blamed for overweight bags

By Charlie Charalambous

PARENTS are being blamed for sending their children to school with crippling overweight bags.

Following an Education Ministry circular banning unnecessary books from being carried to school, elementary teachers union Poed is saying that responsibility lies with the parents.

The ministry has sent a circular to elementary school heads reminding them to enforce regulations concerning the dangers of over-burdened school bags and to introduce inspections.

This has been welcomed by teachers and parents alike, who fear that children could suffer spinal injuries if they continue to lug school bags that are half their weight.

However, Poed said that most of the 60,000 elementary school population were not following instructions and were bringing unnecessary books and exercise books to school.

Some bags have tipped the 14 kilo mark after being weighed, Poed member Sophocles Constantinou said.

He said parents were largely responsible for the problem because they should be checking their children’s bags on a daily basis.

The union also rejects parents’ gripes that teachers issue too much homework to youngsters, which they say is the reason for the bulging bags.

Nevertheless, the Elementary Parents Association backs teachers in efforts to make parents more aware of the dangers of heavy bags.

“If parents checked bags then we wouldn’t have this problem,” association vice-president Dinos Ellinas told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

And Ellinas argued that children were suffering because their parents had a couldn’t care less attitude to all things educational.

“It seems most parents aren’t interested in their children’s school or what they do in their lessons,” said Ellinas.

To help ease the situation, Poed is proposing that personal lockers be introduced in schools for children to keep their excess books.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.