In what is seen as a fallout of Kerala's huge success in family planning, the down trend in enrollment in government and aided schools in the state is continuing with the latest head-count showing a further fall of 2.5 lakh pupils from last year.

Proliferation of unaided schools and the inreasing trend of parents sending their children to English-medium schools following the central syllabuses are also cited by experts as factors for the decline in students in government run and state-supported schools.

The one-day head-count conducted earlier this week across the state found the decline in the number of children at around 2.5 lakh, according to sources in the Directorate of Public Instructions (DPI).

As per this year's figures, there are approximately 43.42 lakh students in government and aided schools from first standard to tenth standard.

In normal case, the steady fall in students over the years would have cost at least 2000 to 3000 teaching jobs. But in Kerala's political context any such largescale retrenchment would be well-neigh impossible, sources in the education department said.

The present student-teacher ratio is around 44:1.

Conisidering further decline in roll-strength, this should be pegged at 43:1, experts said.

Despite the fall in enrollment, hundreds of teaching jobs had been protected over the years, known in local parlance as "protected teachers."

The teachers unions in the state, all of which are oriented towards political parties like CPI(M) and Congress, had often in the past stiffly resisted any move to declare schools with less children as "uneconomic and unviable" render the jobs redundant.

According to official sources,the outcome of the last headcount was not going to leave any immediate consequences in the school education sector. "This need to be seen only as a routine process to determine the roll strength. There is no need to make a hue and cry over it," the official added.