By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Calicut: Malabar has again come out with golden feathers in the Kerala State Secondary Examination results announced on Monday. However, the options for higher studies are still a problem for the northern part of the state. The lack of necessary higher education options in northern Kerala is supposed to affect nearly half a lakh of students who have passed the exam.
There are reportedly 4.20 lakh seats for higher secondary, vocational higher secondary, polytechnic, ITI and ITC taken altogether for 4.08 lakh students eligible for higher studies. Among these seats 2.17 lakh are in the six districts from Thiruvananthapuram to Ernakulam in the southern part of the state. But, the total number of students eligible for higher studies in these districts is 1, 73,056. That is, 44,161 seats are extra in these districts.
Kannur district in Malabar has got the highest percentage of success with 96.88%. And Malappuram district topped in the maximum number of students passing the exam -61,805. Nearly 87 % of the 71,113 students who wrote the exam won in the district. Due to insufficient higher education facilities, 8,534 students in Malappuram district will have to go to other districts to pursue higher education. While 7,982 students in Kozhikode, 6,033 in Palakkad, 3,592 in Kannur, 1,618 in Kasargod and 364 in Wayanad districts will have to go out of their districts for higher studies, the southern districts will be trying hard to fill their seats. There are 10,113 seats extra in Thiruvananthapuram district and thousands in Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Ernakulam districts. This problem is only going to be intense when the results of compartment exams come out within a month.
Seats are indeed present but their non-availability in nearby areas may make it difficult for many to continue normal studies. This situation has forced many students of Malabar to opt for distance learning programmes, private tuition centres etc. Another option in front of them is the booming self-financing educational institutions when government aided institutions in the south lay without enough students. The issue has several times been raised by student organizations and other parties of Malabar during the time of both LDF and UDF governments but no necessary measures were taken.
Successive state governments have always had ministers from Malabar but they too have expressed their interest to set up industrial centres and educational institutions outside Malabar. Instead, they gave affiliation for the many self-financing institutions running in the area which in turn has made education a costly affair. Malabar consists of the six northern districts of Kerala which are relatively less developed than the southern districts.