On the other hand, science and commerce (English medium) seats are set to increase by around 1,000 this year.

The SSC results are to be announced on Thursday and students are getting ready for Class 11 admissions. The sale of application forms will begin on June 25.

Deputy director (education), Pune division, G K Mhamane confirmed that not a single proposal has been received to increase arts seats for Class 11 in the city.

He added that last year around 50 per cent seats of arts seats were vacant in some of the city colleges. “The colleges on the outskirts of the city suffer the most, as they don’t get enough arts students and many seats go vacant,” he said.

“It’s high that the arts syllabus was made more practical. Otherwise there is every possibility of arts courses witnessing an excess staff and some teachers losing their jobs,” said a teacher of the arts faculty.

V M Gaikwad, assistant director of the education department, corroborated this by revealing that in the last academic year after the muster verification, one arts faculty teacher was found extra in the district. He could not have complete his prescribed work as there were no students for him. He was assigned to teach arts subjects taught as add-on subjects in other courses.

“The inclination of students to opt for science and commerce seats is due to more avenues available to pursue professional courses after class 12. The arts stream is still chosen by those who get lower marks or the ones who get higher marks but want to appear for UPSC or MPSC exams or attend some foreign language course later.

But those scoring higher marks generally go to reputed colleges like Fergusson and S P College,” added a teacher.