Bagless School

Millennium National School is a unique school. Not only do we do so much with the children – we also do it without giving the children any burden! Millennium has always been a bagless school.

In the last few years, the Human Rights Division and the education department have suddenly realised that students are carrying heavy bags to and from school. They have realized that this causes physical stress to students and have demanded the load to be reduced. Well, Dr. Phatak has been way ahead of them. Even when the idea of Millennium was being formed, Dr. Phatak had decided that it would be a school which provides a plethora of activities to the children and there would be no bags to be carried.

How do we do this? With creative thinking! We found out what the students usually have to carry and eliminated the need to carry those things through careful planning. Students have their own set of textbooks for themselves at home. The textbooks that are needed in school are kept in school itself. So no textbooks need to be carried between home and school.

The other things that children carry in their bags are notebooks, workbooks, supplementary books etc. We provide the students with worksheets – both printed sheets and plain sheets. Each period’s activity is planned at the beginning of the year. The sheets needed for the activity are printed and handed out to each class at the beginning of the period. There are sheets for revision, learning and exercises and activities too. Because of intensive planning, all activities happen in a systematic manner. There is uniformity in teaching and the system goes on improving each year.

Being bagless does not mean parents are in the dark about what the child is learning in school. The children take home the sheets that they write in school everyday. They even take home the printed sheets that are given to them in class. At the beginning of the year children are given files for each subject. They are expected to file these sheets when they go home everyday. So, at the end of the year, these children have written and studied a lot more material than a student of any traditional school. The whole education system is documented and improved upon each year. So, in a way, being bagless gives us a much better academic quality than any other school.

What else do children carry in their bags? They carry lunch. We provide them lunch here. This not only eliminates the burden of carrying lunch, but gives the children a healthy and tasty lunch in the school. Children cannot possibly carry dal and curd in a tiffin and would otherwise have to miss out on these items. Moreover, they develop healthy eating habits and learn table manners too!

We provide all the sports equipment they need in school too. We give them the swimming costume and towel, launder it and keep it ready for them the next day. Rackets, shuttles, balls, roller skates (along with helmets, knee guards etc.) are all given to the children in school. So, they do not have to carry anything at all. And they get so much from the school in the bargain.

Now when we see all the upheaval of the government on finding ways to reduce the burden of students’ schoolbags, we wonder why they just can’t follow our system, which has already been successfully implemented for a decade. Infact, IBN Lokmat, the news channel, had already featured us as a unique bagless school. You can view the program by going to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr1qMWjMABw