HYDERABAD: At last cheerful news for school kids. The Government on Tuesday finally decided to reduce the load of books on their backs from the next academic year.

Towards this goal, it commenced the process to rewrite the textbooks for Class I, II and V with the change of syllabus to avoid unnecessary pages containing irrelevant matters. Thus, the books with reduced weight will be available from June 2007 when next academic year begins.

After Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy reviewed the issue here, School Education Minister N. Rajyalakshmi told reporters that the changed light-weight textbooks would be made compulsory for private schools as well. She said some private schools prescribed a whopping number of 33 books for Class I as compared to merely four in a Government school. Private institutions would be punished for non-compliance. P. Krishnaiah, secretary, School Education, said many pages in each book were wasted for "introduction", "foreword", editorial names, and national anthems. When these were avoided, the book size would get reduced by at least 10 pages. However, National Anthem "jana gana mana.." would be retained but confined to one book.

They were also contemplating providing three subjects meant for completion in one year in a single book as in Karnataka.. Proverbs would be printed in the space left empty on pages at close of a lesson/chapter.

The Minister said the syllabus for Class II, IV and VI would be changed next year with the same objective. She appealed to parents to extend cooperation in making the initiative successful by not dumping fancy bags on backs of children adding weight.

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