In Salem, 97.28% of students who passed out Class XII in 2025-26 enrolled for higher education. Collector K. Elambahavath said, "an enrollment achievement of 97.28% is one of the highest district-level class XII to higher education transition rates recorded in Tamil Nadu." Officials used special camps and counselling to support students.
The efforts of the Salem district administration to enrol students who passed out Class XII in higher education have paid off as a total of 34,374 students out of 35,334 students who passed out Plus Two in 2025-26 have enrolled for higher studies.
To ensure every student who passed out Plus Two enrolled in higher studies, Collector K. Elambahavath established an educational control room at the Collectorate to coordinate and monitor higher education enrolment for the 2025-26 Class XII cohort.
School Education Department officials said they identified 2,330 students and personally invited them to the Collectorate for the Perithinum Perithu Kel career guidance programme conducted in four phases from May 27 to 31. The control room coordinated family counselling, certificate facilitation, engineering counselling, and choice filling, alternative pathways to ITI and polytechnic courses and assistance for students facing admission or fee-related barriers. Five Uyarvukku Padi camps were conducted - two in Salem, one each in Attur, Konganapuram, and Mecheri, and secured 1,149 direct college admissions for students who required on-the-spot admission support, the officials added.
In a felicitation programme held on Saturday in Salem, the students who were admitted by the efforts of district administration shared their experience.
Mr. Elambahavath said that an enrollment achievement of 97.28% is one of the highest district-level class XII to higher education transition rates recorded in Tamil Nadu. As many as 91 out of 124 students who were initially unwilling to pursue higher studies were brought back into the system through family counselling. He added that 4,795 SC/SC (A), 761 ST, 340 children with special needs, 7,893 persons studied in Tamil medium, 6,091 students eligible under 7.5% reservation, 126 parentless students, and 76 children of conservancy workers were admitted to higher education through group-specific outreach. Further, 1,015 vocational stream students and 26 sports students were placed into appropriate higher education and skill pathways. Steps were taken to enrol remaining 960 students into higher education, he said.