Last week when Kerala government sanctioned new Plus-Two schools, Ernakulam got the highest number of schools — 26. But what’s interesting is that the schools come at a time when 1,942 merit seats are lying vacant in the district after the first round of allotment for 2014-15 batch.
If we look further back, over 11,000 seats remained vacant in the district since 2010-11. Official records with the Department of Higher Secondary Education say that 2,307 vacant seats were reported in the categories of merit, management/community and unaided quota in 2010-11. In 2011-12, the vacant seats shrunk to 1,612 but only to balloon to 4,137 in 2012-13. In 2013-14, the number came down to 1,972.
Demand for seats in the unaided schools was low going by the vacant seats from 2010 to 2014. In 2010, the number of vacant seats was 1,545. Even though it went down to 1,291 in 2011-12, the vacant seats shot up to 2,072 in 2012-13 and 1,457 in 2013-14.
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Rush for seats in the merit quota was high in the last five years but hundreds of seats still went vacant, spotlighting the glut of seats. Curiously, the vacant seats shot up from 163 in 2011-12 to 1,301 in 2012-13. More than 1,900 merit seats were remaining vacant in the district after the first allotment this year.
For seats under the management/community quota category, the highest number of vacant seats was recorded in 2012-13. More than 700 of the 6,456 seats under this quota had no takers then. In 2010-11, it was 128 followed by 158 vacant seats in 2011-12 and 249 in 2013-14.
The number of seats under the merit quota in Ernakulam increased from 19,744 in 2011-12 to 22,169 in 2012-13. Over 160 seats under this category were vacant when the seats were increased. In 2013-14, the number of merit seats in the district was 20,563.
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Seats under the unaided schools had a steady increase over the last five years. In 2010-11, it was 5,455 followed by 6,062 seats in 2011-12; 6918 in 2012-13 and 6,490 in 2013-14.