Just days after proposing public discussions on rescheduling the April-May summer vacations for schoolchildren in Kerala to June-July, Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty has mooted doing away with the idea of ‘backbenchers’ from public school classrooms in the State.
The Minister, in a Facebook post on Tuesday (August 5, 2025) morning, touched upon how being deemed a backbencher could impact a student’s confidence and learning. “No child should be left behind in education or in life,” he said, reiterating the State government’s objective of “ensuring equal opportunities for all children.“
Interestingly, the move comes after the Tamil Nadu government last month directed all middle schools in that State to change the seating arrangements from the traditional row-based seating to U-shape. Government schools in States such as Telangana are also learnt to have voluntarily rearranged their classroom seating. All this prompted by the Malayalam movie Sthanarthi Sreekuttan.
In Kerala, several schools have already adopted a semi-circular classroom seating. No directions towards this have been given officially though.
However, the Minister did not propose a particular formula for the seating arrangement. He merely said the department is exploring how to implement the idea.
To form panel
“Different countries follow varied models to do away with the concept of backbenchers. It has been decided to form a committee of experts to identify the best model suited to our education system,” says the Minister in the post.
Any decision will be taken after examining the committee’s report, he added.
Published – August 05, 2025 11:42 am IST
