Kerala's half-baked move puts students in dire straits

The Kerala government's move to delink pre-degree courses from colleges has put more than two hundred thousand students who passed the secondary school-leaving certificate examination this year, on tenterhooks.

As part of its policy to develop the higher secondary course, the government said one third of the pre-degree batches would be linked to schools from this academic year. Though the govenment has already directed the colleges not to distribute pre-degree application forms, it is yet to announce the names of the schools where the course would be offered. The main hitch in preparing the list of schools is the need for maintaining balance among different communities.

All the four major communities in the state like the Christians, Muslims, Nairs and Ezhavas have their own educational institutions and have come forward with unreasonable claims.

While the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, representing the Ezhava community, has threatened an agitation if the allocation is not proportionate, the students unions affiliated to the Left parties have warned the government against allocation on communal lines. Asserting that facilities offered by the schools should be the major criteria, these unions felt it is unwise to rush through the implementation. Similar reservations have been expressed by the ruling CPI-M's partners and the Opposition.

Besides, in a joint statement, noted academics Ninan Kozhy, N A Karim, A Sreedharan Menon and M N V Nair said that the implementation of the decision with without adequate administrative preparations and a curriculum change will be mechanical and meaningless.

The Students Federation of India, the student wing of the CPI-M, marched to the state secretariat last week, demanding the postponement of the delinking process. Its youth wing, the Democratic Youth Federation of India, has also threatened an agitation if the government went ahead with the proposal without clearing the uncertainty surrounding the issue.

To make matters worse, the teaching and non-teaching staff who would be affected by the decision said they would agitate if their interests were not safeguarded while transferring them from colleges to schools. Declining to postpone the issue, Education Minister P J Joseph said the government was confident of overcoming all the initial difficulties.