Meghalaya schools to have ‘bag-less’ days soon, school calendar 2025 to be notified this year

In a bid to make learning more joyful and stress free, the Meghalaya Government has instructed schools that on certain days the students will be attending schools, but without bags.
The main idea is to engage the children so that they learn through other co-curricular activities.
During the ongoing budget session of the Meghalaya Assembly, state Education Minister Rakkam A Sangma informed the House on Monday that the Education Department is doing so in order to implement activities under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Therefore, the government has given a suggestive list of 10 themes for ‘bagless days.’
But the schools will be at liberty to decide on which day they wish to observe the bagless days.
The Meghalaya Education Minister also told that the school calendar 2025 will be notified in November, later this year.
Sangma in his address in the Assembly said, “A consultation and feedback was also invited on the same. The feedback received on the notified school calendar, that the same should be released in advance so that the school can prepare accordingly. Therefore, school calendar 2025 shall be notified this year in November 2024 itself. That is would be difficult to achieve the minimum school days mandated for UP by certain schools. However, this clause is mandated by the Right To Education (RTE) Act. There were several positive feedbacks as well assuring the compliance from those respective schools. Based on these feedbacks and several other new developments, the school calendar 2025 will be made more comprehensive.”
“Details of the standard operating procedure (SOP) for implementing bagless days will be added to the notification. The strategy and procedure for curating lesson plans and teaching plans will also be added to the subsequent notifications,” Rakkam A Sangma added.
The goal of the Bagless Policy of NEP 2020 is to drastically reduce the amount of weight that kids must carry each day to and from school in their backpacks and textbooks.
The Bagless Policy of NEP 2020 emphasizes the importance of programmes like “bagless day,” “vocational courses,” and “vocational crafts” for the overall development of the children.

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