Bye-Bye Big Bags! MOE Announces Lockers & More For Primary School Students

After generations of students having to carry book bags heavier than the students themselves, the Ministry of Education is finally putting forth initiatives and solutions to unburden current and future school students.

And one of the solutions are lockers!

Senior Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin announced these new initiatives via a video shared to his Twitter page.

His team shared,

“After almost 40 years of the issue of heavy school bags for students:

1. For schools with 2 sessions (morning and afternoon), MOE will be providing lockers for students in schools starting this year.
2. There will be a re-organisation of school timetables for students with 3 to 4 subjects a day.”

In the video, Radzi explained that the ministry will provide lockers for primary school students in stages.

“For schools with 2 sessions, for students in stage 1, which are (students from) standard 1, 2 and 3, we will prepare lockers for them. We want to make sure that this approach will reduce the stress on students,” he said.

He went on to add that students in standard 4, 5 and 6 may also receive lockers next year.

“Insyaallah, we will do this in 2 phases. The first phase this year, we will complete this for students in stage 1 and insyaallah, if there are enough allocations, we will do this for students in stage 2, which are (students from) standard 4, 5 and 6,” he added.

He also shared that the ministry will look into allowing schools to cut down the number of subjects a day in their timetables.

“Sometimes, standard 1 has 7 subjects (a day).”

“So, we sat and we discussed it, this cannot go on, just reduce the subjects (per day) and arrange them accordingly, so that the number of subjects (a day) are reduced and students don’t have to bring along so many book with them,” he shared.

And those aren’t the only initiatives announced! 

• Exercise books: There can be no more than 2 exercise books per subject at a time, and each book cannot contain more than 80 pages.
• Activity books and workbooks: Students may only use activity books provided by the ministry and workbooks can only be used as reference or study material outside of lessons.
• Digital textbooks: Students have access to 692 digital textbooks (and ongoing new publications) via the Digital Educational Learning Initiative Malaysia (DELIMa) platform.
• The PdP Approach: The Education Ministry encourages themed, modular, project-based, practical simulation (Virtual Lab) and differentiated learning.
• KAFA uniforms: Students will no longer need to change out of their school uniforms and into their KAFA uniforms when attending after school Quran and Fardhu Ain Classes (KAFA).

They also added that Parent-Teacher Association (PIBG) engagement sessions will be increased to help build cooperation and collaboration with parents.

With this many new initiatives, all the little kids in primary school will never have to worry about carrying HUGE bags to school anymore!

While our generation never got to see lockers in schools, we’re happy that the younger ones don’t have to struggle now.

Stay tuned for more updates!

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