Plus One applicants from north Kerala districts get short shrift this year too

Even as Plus One admissions drew to a close in Kerala, a large number of applicants from north Kerala districts and Thrissur have not been able to secure seats of their choice.

Data sourced from the Education department by Malabar Education Movement, a Kozhikode-based non-governmental organisation, show that even after the 30% marginal increase in seats announced by the government, there is a gap of 53,996 seats between the number of applicants and the seats available in higher secondary and vocational higher secondary streams, Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), and polytechnic colleges.

A total of 4.22 lakh students in the State became eligible for higher studies when the SSLC exam results were announced. The total number of seats available across districts is 3.85 lakh. There were 2,46,879 applicants from the north Kerala districts and Thrissur, where only 1,92,883 seats are available. The crisis is most severe in Malappuram district. Though 79,152 students became eligible for higher studies there, only 52,750 seats are available across streams.

K. Abdul Nassar and O. Akshay Kumar, members of the organisation, say that even those who get seats are forced to sit in congested classrooms. Though the National Education Policy and various expert committees appointed by the State government suggest that each classroom should accommodate only 30 to 50 students, 65 to 72 students are found studying in classrooms in north Kerala’s higher secondary schools.

Mr. Nassar and Mr. Akshay point out that there are fewer science batches in the north Kerala districts compared with other regions. The Education department has been announcing temporary batches for the past five years to address the shortage in Plus One seats, but no steps are taken to make them permanent. Though some of the vacant Plus One batches from the southern districts are shifted here in recent years, teachers’ posts are not transferred along with them. This defeats the whole purpose of the shifting, they add.