A Union government study has found major region-wise variations in the choice of academic streams at the high school level in the country, with Science being the overwhelmingly popular choice among students in most southern states, where Arts have very few takers. While the large number of institutions offering courses on engineering and medicine in the southern states has always been an indicator of the skew, it is for the first time that the Centre has delved deep into the issue. This will be analysed further by PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), a new division under the NCERT to address such disparities. Which are the top states where the Science stream is popular? Science stream students far outnumbered their Arts counterparts in Andhra Pradesh (75.63 per cent); Telangana (64.59 per cent); Tamil Nadu (61.50 per cent); Uttar Pradesh (57.13); and Kerala (44.50 per cent) in the 2021-22 academic session, according to the government study. Among Northeast states, in Manipur, as many as 68.87 per cent of those who took the Class XII board exams opted for Science. As the list shows, four out of the five large states where Science is the preferred choice among students of class XI-XII are in south India. Where is Arts the preferred choice? The top five states where Arts was the popular pick in 2022 were Gujarat (81.55 per cent); West Bengal (78.94 per cent); Punjab (72.89 per cent); Haryana (73.76 per cent); and Rajasthan (71.23 per cent), showing a larger geographical spread than Science. In the Northeast, Arts was the popular choice in Meghalaya (82.62); Tripura (85.12 per cent); and Nagaland (79.62 per cent). While the study captures the preferences of the class of 2022 only, officials in the Ministry of Education said that the numbers are indicative of decades-long trends. What about the Commerce stream? According to the study, the Commerce stream “has stagnated at the same level over the last one decade”, with around 14 per cent students (national average) pursuing the discipline in high school. Conversely, the share of students opting for Science and Arts has increased from 31 per cent to over 40 per cent (national average) during the same period. What stands out particularly is that in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, where Science is the dominant stream, the preference for Commerce is far above the national average, as in these states, Arts students accounted for a mere 1.53 per cent, 2.01 per cent and 2.19 per cent respectively in the 2022 board examination. As many as 32 per cent high school students enrolled with the Tamil Nadu state education board in 2022 were pursuing Commerce, 23.54 per cent in Telangana and 13.64 per cent in Andhra Pradesh. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh also had 9.85 per cent and 8.54 per cent students signed up with the vocational stream, which has negligible takers in most other states. Do these trends hold at the level of higher education also? There are many indicators which clearly indicate south India's preference for Science education. First, there are 1,229 All India Council For Technical Education-approved institutions offering engineering and technological courses in the five states of south India (including 9 in Puducherry and 1 in Lakshadweep), with a student intake capacity of 5.11 lakh, according to the council's 2022-23 handbook. This is the highest among all other regions. Tamil Nadu alone had 13.8 lakh students pursuing engineering and technical courses in 2022-23, the highest among all states. In terms of medical education, of the 596 medical colleges (both public and private) in India, as many as 225, or 37.7 per cent, are in the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, according to a response furnished by the Ministry of Health in the Lok Sabha in April last year. Moreover, the JEE advanced scores also provide some clues in this regard. For instance, in 2022, IIT Madras zone had 29 candidates in the top 100 category, along with IIT Bombay. Even in 2021, the south zone threw up 27 candidates in this category, right behind IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay zones. The zones that represent the eastern and north-eastern Indian states trail much behind. In JEE Main 2023, Telangana had the maximum (11) number of students with 100 percentile, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, with five each. Why was this area chosen by the government for a study? The study aims to bring equivalence in assessment among various education boards, and looked into many other aspects, such as pass percentages and dropout rates. However, the trends on choice of academic streams is the most significant, as parameters such as dropout rates can also be culled out from other sources, such as the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), while pass percentages of various boards are available publicly.
