12k new admissions push Corpn schools’ strength to highest in 9 yrs

This increase has pushed the admission numbers to the highest in nine years, and may even cross the highest in a decade if the civic body manages to enrol more students before the admission closes next month.

According to Corporation data, as many as 12,477 students have joined the Corporation schools from private and government aided schools till July 2. Last year, around 9,000 students had joined Corporation schools. Around 98 per cent of the new students are from private schools, said a Corporation official.

“We are witnessing higher admissions to classes 6 and 11. There is no chance of government school students moving to Corporation schools. So majority of them are private school students,” the official added.

As per the data, 4,179 students have joined Class 11, 1,595 joined Class 6 and 2,618 kids joined LKG. Of these, most of the students who joined classes 6 and 11 are from private schools. Besides them, 6,514 students have moved within Chennai Corporation schools. In total, the 281 schools of the civic body have recorded 18,991 new admissions.

Overall, the civic body schools have 93,445 students, which higher than the total strength in the last nine years – the previous highest in a decade was 95,664 in 2011-12. This despite Corporation not being able to conduct intensive canvassing and other campaigns owing to the pandemic. “We have a capacity of 1 lakh students in our schools. With the admission processes to be continued till August, we are hoping to fill all the seats,” the official added.

The Corporation schools had a strength of 1.03 lakh students in 2009-10 academic year. However, the student strength had been falling since then. The steady decline brought the numbers down to 83,271 in 2014-15. Since then, the numbers went up and down marginally. The lowest was in 2019-20 when it declined to 83,098 students.

The civic body runs 281 schools, including 32 higher secondary schools, all of which are located in core city zones – Tondiarpet, Royapuram, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, Anna Nagar, Kodambakkam, Teynampet and Adyar.