Bihar wants 'backless Saturday’ in govt schools as official notice misspells 'bagless'

The Bihar government announced a major initiative aimed at making school life more engaging for students but its typo in the notice issued for it has made headlines bringing the education department under scanner. The state government announced that ‘Bagless Safe Saturday’ and ‘Anandiya (joyful) Saturday’ will take place every week. However, the notice issued for it by the Education Department wrote “Bagless” as “backless”. The mistake came into limelight when Bihar MLC Dr Sanjeev Kumar Singh raised the issue in the Bihar Legislative Council.

Singh cited a letter from the Education Department and said that the very department responsible for ensuring quality education was making such a basic error in its official documents. He said in the House, “‘Bagless’ has been written as ‘Backless’. This reflects the state of the Education Department. If the department cannot even write its own letters correctly, how will the quality of education improve?” Dr Sanjeev Kumar Singh also said that education would not improve merely by issuing orders and that practical decisions were needed. He also questioned the continuation of classes on Saturdays, suggesting that either every alternate Saturday should be declared a holiday or Saturdays should be made half-days. Seeking the Chief Minister’s intervention, he said the issue reflected not only the concerns of teachers but also those of parents. He argued that children should not be burdened with a full day of additional studies on Saturdays.

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What we know about ‘Bagless Safe Saturday’?

According to Bihar school notice for the initiative, From 9:00 to 9:30 AM, students will participate in school cleaning activities as part of ‘Shramdaan’. This will be followed by a special awareness session from 9:30 to 10:00 AM. From 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, students will take part in Bagless Safe Saturday activities, selecting activities from the designated domains listed in the Bagless Saturday Activity Wheel. From 12:00 to 1:00 PM, additional Safe Saturday activities will be conducted as per the Safe Saturday Activity Wheel. The schedule will conclude with lunch from 1:00 to 1:30 PM.

It also said that 120 activities to be conducted under Bagless Safe Saturday have been divided into 12 domains and the class teacher must mandatorily participate with the children as a facilitator and observe and evaluate their work. The activities conducted under Bagless Safe Saturday will be marked under Holistic Report Card. A key activity under Bagless Safe Saturday will also be the Parent-Teacher Meeting (PTM).