I am appealing to schools to provide lockers or another solution to our children having to carry around unnecessary heavy bags.

Carrying around a fully loaded school bag isn’t just a logistical nightmare — it can present a serious health risk to young children. If a bag is incorrectly fitted or very heavy, it can impact a child’s health, changing their posture, causing muscle strains, and injuring the body’s joints.

The use of heavy schoolbags is concerning because children do not have a fully developed physical frame. They don’t have the muscles, wide shoulders, robust joints, and strong bones of a fully grown adult. This means that carrying, picking up, and holding heavy objects can place a significant amount of strain on their body. The most concerning effects of heavy schoolbags include:

Muscle Strain,

The simple act of picking up a heavy school bag places a significant amount of stress on the muscles in the back and shoulders. This can lead to children experiencing strained muscles which cause pain and impaired mobility.

Postural Imbalances

This is the most concerning aspect of having a heavy bag. If a child has a heavy bag that is often placed on a single shoulder, it can cause them to develop a postural imbalance called ‘drop shoulder’. One shoulder will become lower than the other, which causes a series of other problems including pain, loss of mobility, and an unusual gait.

Forward head posture and rounded shoulders are also common postural problems that can occur when a child is wearing a heavy and poorly fitted back pack. These issues occur because a poorly fitted back pack can shift a child’s centre of gravity so their torso is pulled backwards, with their neck and shoulders leaning forwards in an effort to carry the weight.

Repetive Strain injuries.

Children will pick up and put down their school bag dozens of times each day. If the bag is extremely heavy, there is a risk of a repetitive strain injury developing. This could affect any of the muscles and joints in the arms, hands, neck, shoulders, or back.

Please sign this petition so that we can get it to the right people to take action. Your help and support is greatly appreciated and any solutions to this problem needs to have our kids health and well-being as a priority. 

My child is currently a year 7 and very small for his age and he is struggling daily to carry his bag around with no facilities at school to store it, and not to mention when he also has PE and/or cooking as this is then an extra bag or two added to the mix.