KOCHI: The headmaster and teachers of Irumpanam Vocational Higher Secondary School (VHSS) are ecstatic.
Sidhath Cheetri, who hails from Nepal and is the lone foreign student at his school, secured an impressive A+ in all six of his subjects – one of them Malayalam – in the SSLC examination held earlier this year.
“Sidhath is a very good student and had even joined the Roshini project to improve his Malayalam. His efforts paid off,” said headmaster Reni V K. ‘Roshni’ is the Ernakulam district administration’s project aimed at improving language proficiency of migrant workers’ children.
Reni said Sidhath’s brother had been their student and scored A+ in all subjects in SSLC. “Sidhath joined us in Class 8. He studied from Class I to 7 in a school at Kodamkulangara. He has been consistent in his studies and plans to take up the science stream for Plus-I,” Reni said.
Sidhath and his family have been living in Kerala for more than 14 years. His father is an attendant at Varma Hospital in Tripunithura and his mother works in a supermarket. He is one of the 95 Nepali students studying in Kerala schools.
As per the statistics released by General Education Minister V Sivankutty in the assembly, 24,061 students from other states and 350 from other countries are enrolled in Class 1 to 12 in Kerala schools (2024-25).
Ernakulam has the highest number of such students. Of those from other countries, a majority hail from Nepal (364), followed by the Maldives (two) and Sri Lanka and the Philippines (one each).
An official with the Roshni project said implementation of the Jyoti project will shed more clarity on the number of students from outside studying in Kerala.
“The present available data is the one compiled by the labour and statistics departments. Once the Jyoti project is launched, data on students in schools in other districts can be mapped; the number will be higher. We have a clear understanding about the number of students in Ernakulam due to the Roshni project. In Ernakulam, 40 schools have implemented the project, which has helped students from other states,” he said.
Sivankutty said the Jyoti project will be implemented in the state soon, as announced by the chief minister.
“The general education department, along with local bodies, will initiate steps to implement the project in every district,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Roshni project official attributed the issue of dropouts to the change in migration pattern among workers from other parts of the country.
“Before the pandemic, the workers stayed in one place for more than a year. Now, migration has become seasonal. If they work at a particular place for six months, they shift to another district for the next six. This depends on their job profile and availability of work. And when the parents move, the children too are withdrawn from the school,” said the officer.