Parents Sylvia Spring has some practical advice for lessening the weight on our children's shoulders

I AM the mother of two sons, Ian in fifth class and Matthew in sixth. I'm ill with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and, being pretty much bed bound at the moment, I find I have quite a lot of time to think.

My thoughts recently led me to the problem of 20 to 30 pound school bags. If my two sons are anything to go by, a great deal of our school going children have already developed what I call "the school bag stoop", which could easily develop - after many years of hauling that overweight, school bag in and out of school - into chronic back disorders or other back related conditions.

I am not surprised that this summer's movie blockbuster, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was popular with all our children. Perhaps they identified with the unfortunate hunchback, Quasimodo.

To solve the school bag stoop, I would propose the following:

. Leave school text books at home

. A small change in the way school books are bound, utilising adhesive type binding instead of the traditional method of book binding, would allow pupils to detach whatever chapter they are working on

. Provision of ordinary clip folders for each subject would cost approximately 99 pence each.

. Use folder dividers, so that each subject can be labelled and divided, according to the daily timetable.

. Get an ample supply of A4 size paper for taking class notes and for homework at home.

Removing the next chapter of the home based text book would be simple, and completed chapters could be stored in "work completed" folders.

THIS would demand only a very basic level of organisation on the part of the teacher or student. In the event of a text book page going missing without trace, there is always the "user friendly" photocopying machine to hand in most schools.

I do not see any reason why this method of text book planning and chapter mobility/inter changeability should not work at all levels of education where there is a problems of transporting school bags, filled to bursting point with text books, and other daily used paraphernalia. So, we are left with clip folders, some writing materials, pencil case and lunch box in our now manageable school bag.