Applications for Plus One Higher Secondary admission will likely be invited from June 2.
Like last year, the admission process will be spread across five stages. The General Education department is currently holding discussion on the admission schedule. However, the imbalance in number of Plus One seats across districts that has been hampering the Plus One admission process for long remains a challenge.
Even as the prospectus is being finalised, policy decisions on a number of issues such as shifting of uneconomic batches (when the number of students in each batch falls below 25), sanctioning of additional batches, and marginal seat increase will have to be taken by the government.
This year, 4,17,077 students passed the SSLC examinations. This number is 6,226 lesser than last year’s 4,23,303. Even accounting for those who clear the SAY examinations this year, the total will remain less than those seeking admission last year. However, only 3,60,692 higher secondary seats are available this year.
VHSE seats
Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty had said that 33,030 vocational higher secondary seats were available as also 9,990 polytechnic seats, and 61,429 ITI seats, taking the total number of seats available to those who passed the SSLC examinations to 4,65,141. However, the Minister’s claim ignores that fact that most of the demand is for higher secondary seats. Last year, VHSE seats remained vacant after the admissions were completed. Also, the number of students joining ITI and polytechnics directly after SSLC remains indeterminate. The district-wise availability of seats too has not been made available.
Last year, a marginal seat increase of up to 30% was sanctioned, 79 temporary batches shifted and two new batches sanctioned, resulting in 62,000 additional seats. However, when the Plus One admission ended, nearly 10,000 seats were left vacant in government schools and 9,000 in aided school. Of the nearly 54,000 seats in unaided schools, 25,000 remained vacant. In fact, seats in unaided seats remain vacant every year. In Malappuram alone, more than 12,000 students took admission to SCOLE-Kerala for open schooling after they could not get Plus One single-window admission.
This paradox of shortage of seats in northern districts of the State, even as seats remain vacant after the admission process is completed is one of the issues that the committee set up by the government to study reorganisation of batches studied.
Panel recommendations
The V. Karthikeyan Nair-led committee had recommended that additional batches be sanctioned in districts such as Malappuram, Kozhikode, Palakkad, and Kannur to address the seat crisis. Last year, Thiruvananthapuram and six northern districts had been sanctioned a 30% marginal seat increase. However, the demand from these districts is for additional batches, not marginal increase so as to avert problems arising from overcrowded classrooms. This though is bound to require additional financial commitment from the government. The indications are marginal seat increase will continue this year too.
The southern districts, on the other hand, have batches but few students. As many as 105 uneconomic batches with less than 25 students exist in the government and aided sector. The committee also examined if these could be shifted to places experiencing seat shortage. Though the demand for shifting batches is strong, the Minister has said a decision cannot be taken in haste as the right of no student to get educated could be denied.
Imbalance in seats also exists within districts. There are schools in the State with nearly 80 students in a Plus One division.
The government is also unlikely to conduct admission to 10% community quota seats.
