All eligible students will get Plus One admission: Sivankutty

‘Last year, all students who secured full A plus could be given the course of their choice’

Kerala General Education Minister V. Sivankutty. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu

The government is making all arrangements for enabling Plus One admissions for all students who qualified for higher secondary education and parents nor students need not have any anxiety on that score, Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty said in the House on Thursday.

He was replying to a calling attention motion moved by K.M. Sachin Dev. There are 2,19,274 seats in the State for the Science batch, 87,148 seats for Humanities and 1,25,659 seats for Commerce subjects.

In the 2021-22 academic year, the pass percentage was 99.47%, with 1,25,509 children securing A plus for all subjects. All students who secured full A plus could be given admission to the course of their choice last year.

Admissions are usually conducted to 33,000 seats in vocational higher secondary, 1,83,085 government seats, 1,92,630 aided seats, 61,429 ITI seats and 9,990 polytechnic seats. Last year, admissions were conducted to 4,32,081 seats, including 71,489 seats added last year. There were no complaints about any child not getting admission, Mr. Sivankutty, said.

Keen on humanities

This year, the pass percentage is 99.26% and the number of children who qualified for higher education is 4,23,303. During last year’s admissions, children were found to have more interest in humanities than science. Malappuram district, with 17,120 applications, topped the demand for humanities admissions.

Previous year’s higher secondary admissions were held in two main stages and this year’s admissions might need to be done in three stages. Through the single window system, a student can apply to any number of schools for first year higher secondary admission. School allotment is also done through the same single window system. To prepare the allotment list, apart from merit marks, bonus points are also given. Hence it is possible that not every student will be able to get admission in the neighbourhood school, he said. 

On CBSE, ICSE students

This year, CBSE, ICSE students who seek admission in government seats should also be considered. Some teachers have been portraying them as ‘enemies’ and have been showing open antagonism towards them. There is no need for such an attitude, as they are all students in Kerala and their right to higher education should also be protected , Mr. Sivankutty said.

The government intends to give more weightage to merit and bonus points cannot be allowed to overtake merit points. Hence, some differences are possible in admissions this year, he added.