What is seen as the result of the success of family planning programme, the enrolment of children in schools in Kerala has been declining steadily over the last few years.

The trend has rendered a large number of primary schools economically unviable which, in turn, would make thousands of teaching jobs redundant in future.

In 2008-09, 45.46 lakh students were enrolled in schools, which declined to 44.58 lakh in 2009-10 and came further down to 43.51 lakh in 2010-11, according to the economic review tabled in the assembly recently.

"The change in demographic pattern of the state due to low birth rate is the main reason attributed for this phenomenon," said the review brought out by the state planning board.

The declining trend has been evident in lower and upper primary schools, the two main school entry levels. However, the high school section showed a moderate increase in enrolment over the previous years.

As many as 3962 schools have been identified as "uneconomic schools" as they have a mismatch in student-teacher ratio.

However, closing down unviable schools is a difficult option for the government as education is a major job-generating sector in the state.

Both the CPI-M-controlled Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), which have been in power alternately over the decades, have declined to take any radical action against "uneconomic" schools as teachers are highly unionised and enjoy political clout.

A total of 2,918 teachers in the state were categorised as "protected teachers" as they are retained in service despite division falls in schools due to low enrollment.

The girls constituted 49.27 percent of the total enrolment, which shows that the gender gap is virtually absent in education of children in the state.

Kerala also has the lowest drop-out rate in India of 0.66 percent.

A state that far surpassed most other regions of the country in education, Kerala has a total of 12,642 schools, of which 4,501 are government run, 7,278 aided and 863 unaided.

The number of teachers in 2010 stood at 1,71,036, of whom 1,04,032 are in aided schools, which are run by private management with the government paying salary of teachers and non-teaching staff.