12.5kg school backpack no lockers

[PalmLady]

My son's Y7 back pack with only the absolute necessary items weighs 12.5kg. There are no lockers for them to use. This seems excessive to me? My son only weighs 35kg himself.

that's a lot to be lugging around isn't it? It's more than I take to work myself. I have to take a laptop, but not a charger. And no textbooks, pencil case etc.

When I was at school myself, I remember carrying around a heavy bag of books but at least I didn't need the laptop and charger. If they're being asked to lug in a laptop and charger, you'd think they wouldn't then need textbooks and minimal exercise books.

So you were in the same classroom for every lesson?

@minipie

There must be somewhere to leave it even if not a locker. Surely he has a peg?? Shelves?

▪️Can I ask how long ago you left secondary school?

I have a child at secondary school lololulu

Well, in my school there is a very large cupboard in the food tech area for leaving ingredients.

There are 5 classes a day x 30 students is 150 sets of ingredients.

So nowhere near 1000 sets of ingredients.

And every teacher (or most) have a form room with space at the back.

Not everyone left their PE kits but I did allow it for any e that wanted to, they went on top of the cupboards at the back of the room. Form group of 25.

@Octavia64

Well if the food ingredients or is kit were left at my dds school they would get nicked.

Pe

Mainly because I can get a weeks worth of clothes, including 2 pairs of shoes, toiletry bag, laptop and charger, couple of books, lunch, battery packs, adapters etc in a suitcase and backpack and come in under 12.5kg. I can actually manage for 2 weeks with 12.5kg of luggage if I’m efficient.

i am struggling to compute how 1 days worth of school kit in one backpack can be 12.5kg. Even factoring in text books. When I was at uni carrying around graduate texts and notes which were really big it wasn’t that heavy.

if kids really are taking that much how come I’m not seeing them with the equivalent of carry on luggage rather than just a backpack?

my 2 dc have just left secondary and certainly never got to 12 kg, even with PE and home ec stuff.

I still don't get it, surely you are adding extra weight with a file and wallets if you have to take your books anyway.

What do his classmates do?

Still where are you going to put 150 sets of ingredients every single day? And how are you ensuring Joe gets his ingredients and not John's?

@lololulu

We weren't necessarily but had a form room.

It was in the 80s mind you.

Totally sympathetic about this situation as the schools should provide lockers

In the fridges/cupboard put aside for the ingredients, in a named box?
Thats how my kids school manages it!

Our school nurse invites kids to weigh their bags and sends them to their lockers... it is an ongoing discussion for every year 7 group! .. but they do have lockers:

https://jccponline.com/Backpacks.pdf. suggests back packs should be no more than 10 to 15% of body weight - which would be less than half of what he was carrying today.. no easy solution.

My son is a hockey goalie... thankfully his kit bag has wheels!

Schools need to take responsibility for pupils wellbeing.

That includes secure spaces to store stuff rather than carrying it round.

I suggest that this sort of thing might come back and bite them one day.

The difference is that you carry the file in your arms and that significantly lessens the weight in your bag, so it spreads it out and makes it easier to manage

Why do people keep making this comment, perhaps the class was told to bring that in, has OP confirmed this or not?

In any case, 600ml of liquid weighs 600g, just over half a kilo, its not the thing that is weighing down this bag, although it would be cumbersome, hope it was in a locknlock box.

What about these year 7s then transporting this load of soup / casserole back home. I can’t imagine the carnage!

it reminds me of the time I tried to do a lamb casserole on a camping trip in one of those stew pots in an insulated bag that you leave to slow cook.
Tipped the whole fucking thing over the tent carpet when a storm took our tent off.
Moral of the story, stews and soups are for worktops and main ovens only!

a food tech teacher that tells 33 students, most of whom will travel in by bus, to bring in and then carry wound until the lesson 600ml of liquid?

Last time she’d ever do that i imagine!

For DoE expeditions, they specify that the youngsters must not carry more than 25% of their body weight (I heard this from a parent of a rather under-sized lad - what a good idea to make it a rule so that smaller kids don't feel pressured into carrying too much).

I think that gives you good grounds to ask the school what can be done.

The ingredients list was 600ml stock. I probably could have sent in a stock cube but I didn't want to risk there not being time to make stock in the lesson. I thought if they were making stock it would have listed stock cube instead but that could definitely have saved some weight. 😆

There were two metal soup containers, one holding the stock and a spare to put the soup in because I figured if one was taken up with just stock then the other ingredients had to fit somewhere as well. He came home with both containers full of hot soup. I wouldn't have wanted to use plastic containers for hot food. I guess it was just probably a particularly heavy food tech week.
He had also had both his trainers and sports boots, plus his shin pads and mouth guard for rugby (this was the pe lesson). It was a lot of stuff but nothing I could leave out.