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Ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP Arman Saghatelyan on 7 February thanked the ministers of health and education and science for the measures taken towards settling the issue raised by him regarding the overweight school bags.

“The issue refers to the normative acts on the weight of school bags. I hope that more steps will follow to comply with the standards for us to figure out how to maintain that norm: whether it will be a review of the educational process or issues relating textbooks. Many parents, including me, are also following the settlement process of that issue and are expecting to see more steps to that end,” the lawmaker said at a Q&A session with the parliament.

To remind, during a Q&A session with the Government of Armenia back in 2017, MP Arman Saghatelyan noted that he had weighted the school bags of his and his friends’ children to reveal that they weighed more than 5kg. The MP called the government’s attention to the issue and proposed to jointly resolve the problem threatening schoolchildren’s health.

As a solution, MP Saghatelyan came up with a proposal to move from textbooks to electronic books and tablets.

Following his speech, upon the order of Minster of Health Levon Altunyan, the requirements for educational institutions implementing general education programs have been defined. According to the document, the weight of school textbooks and stationery taken to school must not exceed 1.5 kg for the school children of the 2nd and 3rd grades, 2kg – for the 3rd and 4th graders, 2,5 kg – for the 5th and 6th graders, 3,5 kg – for the 7th and 8th graders and 4kg – for the schoolchildren from 9th to 12th grades.    

The decision also defines the requirements for the sanitary status of schools and its maintenance, according to which schools must be clean, with cleaning works to be carried out on a daily basis and a basic cleaning of a school building once per month.