Sasthrolsavam is not a stage festival. Where a school kalolsavam is judged on live performance — a song, a dance, a speech in front of a panel — Kerala’s school Sasthrolsavam is judged on what a student builds, writes or presents as an exhibit: a working model, a chart, a project report, a craft item made on the spot. It runs as five separate fairs — Science, Mathematics (Ganithashastramela), Social Science (Samoohyashastramela), Work Experience (Pravruthiparichayamela) and IT (ICT Mela) — each with its own item list and its own evaluation rules, all published by KITE (Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education) under the General Education Department. For a coordinator who has only ever run a kalolsavam, the judging model is genuinely different, and getting it wrong (scoring a project like a performance, or missing a fair-specific rule) is an easy mistake to make.
This is built directly from the Sasthrolsavam Manual 2025 and the official 2026 item list published on the KITE Mela portal — not a secondhand summary. Where the manual doesn’t give a complete rule, this says so rather than inventing one.
Age groups run by school class, not by age — same bands across all five fairs
Like the CBSE Sahodaya kalotsav (and unlike the government kalolsavam, which groups by age), every Sasthrolsavam fair groups students by class, and the same four bands repeat across Science, Maths, Social Science and Work Experience — only IT drops the youngest band:
| Category | Classes | Science / Maths / Social Science / Work Experience | IT (ICT Mela) |
|---|---|---|---|
| LP | 1–4 | Runs | No LP level |
| UP | 5–7 | Runs | Runs — only 3 items (Digital Painting, Malayalam Typing, IT Quiz) |
| HS | 8–10 | Runs | Runs — full item list |
| HSS/VHSS | 11–12 | Runs | Runs — full item list |
Five fairs, five item catalogues
Each fair has its own official item list. None of the five overlap — a school entering all five fairs is really running five parallel competitions on the same event:
| Fair | Sample items | Individual or Team |
|---|---|---|
| Science | Working Model, Still Model, Investigatory Project, Research Type Project, Robotics, Electronics, IOT, Science Drama, Science Magazine, C V Raman Essay Writing, Science Quiz, NCERT/VITM Science Seminar | Mostly Team at LP/UP (Charts, Collections, Environmental Observation Presentation); mostly Individual from HS upward (Robotics, Electronics, Investigatory Project, Essay Writing) |
| Mathematics | Working Model, Still Model, Number/Geometrical/Other Chart, Puzzle, Game, Pure Construction, Construction Using Geogebra Software, Single Project, Group Project, Maths Magazine, Madhava/Bhaskaracharya/Ramanujan Paper Presentation (by level), Maths Quiz | Almost every item is Individual — only Group Project (2 students) is a team item |
| Social Science | Working Model, Still Model, Charts, Collections, Album Making, Atlas Making, Local History Writing, History Seminar, News Reading, Elocution, Social Science Quiz | Mix of Individual and Team by item |
| Work Experience | 25 shared LP/UP craft items (Paper Craft, Origami, Doll Making, Embroidery, Coir Door Mats, Bamboo Products…) plus a larger 35-item HS/HSS-VHSS set adding Electronics, Garment Making, Budding/Layering/Grafting and Innovative Working Model | Individual — each student builds one item on the spot |
| IT (ICT Mela) | Digital Painting, Malayalam Typing, IT Quiz (UP+), Multimedia Presentation, Web Page Designing, Scratch Programming, Animation (HS/HSS-VHSS only) | Individual |
How judging actually works — three genuinely different scoring models
This is the part that trips up a coordinator used to kalolsavam-style stage judging. Sasthrolsavam doesn’t score one way — it scores three different ways depending on the fair and the item:
- Per-item criteria out of 100, with a viva. Science and Social Science exhibits are judged on a criteria table specific to that item — a Working Model is scored on Creativity, Innovation, Scientific Principle, Craftsmanship, Utility, Durability and Presentation; a Research Type Project adds a Project Report component; an Environmental Observation Presentation includes a 10-mark Interview. Most of these tables end in a Presentation, Interaction or Viva component — the judge questions the student about their own work, not just looks at the exhibit.
- One shared rubric for every item, every level — Work Experience only. Unlike every other fair, Work Experience prints a single 4-row evaluation table — Workload/child’s contribution 40%, Skill and completeness 25%, Knowledge of raw materials and tools 20%, Social utility and marketability 15% — that applies identically whether the student is making a coir door mat or an innovative working model. It’s a genuinely different scoring model built for a single-sitting, on-the-spot craft competition (about 3 hours) rather than a pre-built exhibit.
- Objective and hybrid scoring — IT fair. IT Quiz is scored by a percentile formula (a participant’s score divided by the highest score in the competition, ×100) rather than judge-assigned marks. Malayalam Typing is a two-part hybrid: an auto-computed CPM/accuracy score for Part 1 (50 marks, the only part UP students do) plus a judge-scored Character/Paragraph/Picture/Page-formatting rubric for Part 2 (50 marks).
A few items in the manual print tables that don’t total 100 — Science Fair’s Chart and Simple Experiment (LP) both add up to 95, and Social Science’s History Seminar totals 90. We don’t guess which mark is missing or silently round it up; a real event should either query its own current-year circular or set the total the coordinator confirms with the department.
The “Teaching Aid” trap
Several fairs’ item lists include a “Teaching Aid” entry — and in the Maths and IT fairs, the manual is explicit that it’s a teachers’ competition, not a student one (“ICT Teaching Aid Competition (UP/HS/HSS Teachers)”). Science Fair’s Teaching Aid item has no scoring table at all. It’s an easy item to copy into a student event by mistake if you’re working from a generic item list rather than each fair’s own rules text — worth checking against the current circular before you open registration for it.
Levels: school → sub-district → district → state
Sasthrolsavam cascades the same way a government kalolsavam does — winners promoted upward, not re-entered fresh at each level — but Work Experience Fair has its own twist: LP and UP finish at the sub-district level, while only HS and HSS/VHSS advance to the state round. At district and state level, a Work Experience entry is also put on public display alongside the competition — the manual’s item names carry an “(Exhibition)” tag for this, which is a display requirement rather than a separate competition item, so it isn’t installed as one.
Running all five fairs with eTalenter
Five item catalogues, three different scoring models and a class-based (not age-based) grouping is exactly the kind of structural mismatch that breaks a spreadsheet built for one event type. eTalenter keeps each fair as its own item set with its own participant type, gender rule and scoring configuration — a Work Experience item’s single shared rubric, a Science item’s per-item criteria table with a viva component, and IT Quiz’s percentile scoring can all run side by side in the same event without one fair’s rules leaking into another’s. Online registration keeps students grouped by class the way the manual requires, and judge scoring and tabulation handles exhibit-plus-viva scoring the same way it handles a stage item — enter the marks, and the tabulation and results publishing work the same regardless of what’s being judged.
See how a different class-based (not age-based) Kerala school competition is structured in the CBSE Sahodaya kalotsav article, or how the main kalolsavam items list compares for the performance side of Kerala school competitions.
Frequently asked questions
Is Sasthrolsavam the same as the school kalolsavam?
No. Kalolsavam is Kerala’s school arts festival, judged on live stage performance (song, dance, speech). Sasthrolsavam is a separate set of five fairs — Science, Maths, Social Science, Work Experience and IT — judged on projects, exhibits, charts and on-the-spot craft work, run under its own manual by the same department. A school can run both, but they use different item lists, different age/class bands in places, and different judging methods.
Are Sasthrolsavam projects judged individually or as a team?
It depends on the fair and item, not a single rule for the whole event. Science Fair’s LP/UP exhibits (Charts, Collections, Environmental Observation) are mostly Team; its HS/HSS-VHSS projects (Robotics, Electronics, Investigatory Project) are mostly Individual. Maths Fair is almost entirely Individual, with Group Project (2 students) the one exception. Work Experience is Individual throughout — each student builds their own craft item.
Does every Sasthrolsavam item get scored out of 100 by a judging panel?
Most do, on a criteria table specific to that item or, for Work Experience, one shared table across every item. A few don’t: Science Quiz, Maths Quiz, Social Science Quiz and Talent Search Exams are objective-format tests with no judge criteria table, and IT Quiz is scored by a percentile formula against the highest scorer rather than judge marks.
Setting up Science, Maths, Social Science, Work Experience or IT fair for your school? Open a live kalolsavam demo and log in as a demo coordinator or judge (no sign-up), message us on WhatsApp (WhatsApp only — no phone calls), or email support@etalenter.com.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.