THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Are school students in Kerala steadily losing interest in Malayalam as a medium of instruction?
As per the data from the Pareeksha Bhawan, the number of students who wrote SSLC exams in Malayalam has seen a significant fall from 55.93% in the 2018-19 academic year to 36.56% in 2024-25. Of the 4,27,017 students who appeared this March, only 1,56,161 wrote the exam in Malayalam medium, which is 87,000 less than the 2,43,409 students who appeared in 2019.
Education experts attributed the fall to the public perception that studying in English medium will help students in future. Pareeksha Bhavan officials said the drop was due to the reduction in students studying in the Malayalam medium. A senior education department official said the ratio of English to Malayalam admission had nearly reached 70:30 in primary classes.
“The key reason is the public perception that English is somehow a better medium of instruction,” said K Anvar Sadath, CEO of Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE). However, choosing English as the medium may not always translate into results, he said.
‘Malayalam medium no. expected to fall in coming years’
“We have noticed that the standard of students’ English in some Malayalam medium schools is excellent. So it is not the medium, but the language activities carried out in a school that would help improve communication skills,” he said.
Jayaprakash RK, director of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), said the shift was an indicator of the rural-urban continuum Kerala had attained, and that the middle-class belt had widened. “So, most parents wish to get their children admitted to English medium schools. The students who wrote the SSLC exam in 2025, joined Class 1 by 2014-15. So technically, these figures only represent a parent’s aspirational level a decade ago. The Malayalam medium numbers are only expected to fall in the coming years,” he said.
When contacted, Aikya Malayala Prasthanam state convenor R Nandakumar said the drop in numbers could lead to stagnation of development in the state.
“Malayalam is the baseline of all developments that have taken place in Kerala. A non-affinity to Malayalam could mean our students may not have proper awareness about their land, forests or seas. How can we expect a change if they don’t know this?” he said.
Maintaining he was not against teaching English in schools, Nandakumar, however, said, “If the right interventions are not made, this could lead to unprecedented problems.”