Malappuram: Malappuram is attracting more students from outside the district and fast becoming a hub of coaching centres for medical and engineering entrance examinations. This year’s applications for the single window admission to higher secondary schools in the district point to such a trend. While the district is grappling with the shortage of Plus- One seats with only 60,646 seats available for the 76,985 students who passed the SSLC exam, the number of applicants for the Plus-One has already exceeded all calculations. As many as 78,019 applications were received by Tuesday for admissions to higher secondary schools in the district.
This shows that students from the neighbouring districts are also trying a hand here while around 15,000 CBSE students within the district are waiting for their class X results.
The overflow of Plus-One applications is said to be linked with the admissions to the coaching centres for competitive examinations at various parts in the district. Many small town coaching centres which provide entrance coaching along with Plus-One and Plus-Two have considerable number of students from neighbouring districts, especially from Palakkad. “Thirty percent of the total admissions to our residential coaching classes is from outside the district. We have students from Palakkad, Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasargode. This is the trend for the past two years,” says the head of a private coaching institute at Kottakkal.
“There is a rush from northern districts, especially after our students performed well in recent years garnering first and fourth ranks besides several top ranks in the state and national-level entrance tests,” he said. Coaching centres in Manjeri, Perinthalmanna, Kondotty, Tirur and other small towns have also students from the neighbouring districts. Many coaching centres have tie-up with nearby unaided higher secondary schools for admitting students.
There are not enough CBSE higher secondary schools as well to cater to the needs of around 15,000 students who will pass out of CBSE class X. “There are around 8,000 higher secondary seats in the district. The past trend of migration of the CBSE students to state syllabus for Plus-One would also recede this year because the CBSE has already taken over the conduct of NEET and will manage other national competitive tests as well,” Abdul Nasar, treasurer of the All-Kerala Sahodaya School Complex said.
Meanwhile, schools in the district stopped accepting applications on Tuesday because of lack of specific direction from the higher authorities. At the same time, the online link for the single window admission is still working. The Kerala High Court had extended the deadline for applications until June 5.
