Assessment of school bag weight and musculoskeletal pain in school children of Mangalore city in Southern India

Introduction: With reforms in school education being introduced, positive changes in the system will hopefully enable children to face future challenges. It is recommended that the ideal school bag weight should be less than 10% of the child’s body weight. It is possible that due to changes in syllabi and overloaded curriculum, children now carry heavy school bags. This could potentially increase the risk of developing musculoskeletal discomfort.
Objectives: To determine the number of children with overloaded bags (>10% of body weight) and their effect in terms of pain and to determine the association of the effect of school bag weight with body weight, body mass index (BMI) and gender of the children.
Method: Children in classes 1-10 from schools of Mangalore city in Southern India were included. Individual school bags were weighed and duration of carrying the bag noted. Weight and height of the children were measured and BMI calculated. Presence or absence of musculoskeletal pain as perceived by the child was noted and data were analysed using SPSS 21 software.
Results: Out of the 1152 children included in our study, 952 (82.6%) carried overloaded school bags. It was observed that primary classes (1st to 5th standard) and upper primary (6th to 8th standard) students carried more overloaded school bags as compared to secondary classes (9th and 10th standard), which was statistically significant (p<0.001). Among those with BMI <18 kg/m2, 96.2% carried overloaded bags. Of all study participants, 219 (19%) carried them for more than 10 minutes and among these, 187 (85.4%) had overloaded school bags and this was statistically significant (p=0.006). Overloaded school bags carried by females was higher when compared to males and this was statistically significant (p=0.04). Pain  was perceived by 206 (17.9%) students and shoulder was the most common site of pain (51%), which was not statistically significant (p=0.142).
Conclusions: Most students (82.6%) carried overloaded school bags across classes 1-10, more so children belonging to primary classes.