Migration of CBSE, ICSE students to state Plus II course records huge dip in Kerala
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The number of students migrating from schools affiliated with national boards, such as CBSE and ICSE, to the state higher secondary schools after Class X has registered a significant dip this year.
While more than 50% of students who passed CBSE Class X from the state used to switch to the state Plus II syllabus five years ago, the migration rate has fallen to 32.43% this year, denoting a sharp drop of around 10% compared to the previous year.
The number of ICSE students who shifted to the state higher secondary course also dropped by nearly 10% this year compared to 2023. In 2019, close to 47% of students had migrated to the state Plus II syllabus from the ICSE stream.
A section of academics has cited chances of better performance in the entrance examinations for admission to engineering, medical and other professional courses as the reason for national board students not opting for migration to state syllabus.
Notably, in the state engineering entrance exam this year, 55% of the top 5,000 ranks were bagged by students from the CBSE stream, according to figures provided by the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations (CEE). The state syllabus students clinched 40% of the top 5,000 ranks. In exams such as NEET also, CBSE students were at an advantage.
According to Indira Rajan, secretary-general of the National Council of CBSE Schools, the trend of migration of national syllabus students to the state has been on the wane since 2018. She attributed the parents’ insistence on quality of education rather than ease of fetching marks as the reason for the drop. “Also, the trend of overseas migration of students for undergraduate courses has brought back the focus on communication skills and educational standards that are important yardsticks to succeed at the international level,” she opined.
Meanwhile, stakeholders in the higher secondary sector have pointed out that the recent controversies surrounding the availability of seats for state Plus I admission have landed the sector in a state of uncertainty. “With even students who have cleared the SSLC exam uncertain about chances of admission in the state higher secondary course, parents of children in CBSE and ICSE schools would naturally prefer their children continuing in the same syllabus,” pointed out a higher secondary teacher.
According to this year’s higher secondary admission statistics, only 25,350 students from the CBSE stream had applied for the state Plus I course. The number of applicants from the ICSE stream was only 2,627.
“The number of applications used to be nearly double this year’s figure in the previous years,” said a senior official of the general education department.