Manjeri’s Tuition Centers Are Swapping PSC Coaching for Coding Classes. Here Is Why

India’s school curriculum now requires coding lessons starting in grade 6. The Central Board of Secondary Education built that syllabus for classes 6 to 8 in partnership with Microsoft, and a related computational thinking and AI curriculum is rolling out nationwide. That policy shift is one clue to why a computer subject is starting to show up on the whiteboard of small-town tuition centers that used to run PSC batches only, Manjeri included.

For years, tuition centers around Manjeri had one main job: get students ready for PSC exams. Most still do. But a handful are now adding a second offering, coding or basic tech classes, alongside their usual coaching. This is not a full switch. It is a scattered, early addition.

PSC coaching built its dominance on one simple bet

In Malappuram district, and across much of Kerala, a government job has long been the safest bet for a family. It comes with steady pay, job security, and social standing. PSC coaching centers built their entire business model around that demand, and bank exam and entrance coaching followed the same logic.

Kerala Public Service Commission exams draw a huge number of applicants every year, which is exactly why coaching around them became a fixture of small-town life here. That demand has not gone away. PSC coaching centers in Manjeri still report steady batches, and nothing in this shift suggests that changes.

A national policy shift is showing up in local classrooms

The coding-in-schools mandate is not the only sign of this trend. India’s edtech market for skills like coding was valued at roughly 3.6 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected to grow past 33 billion dollars by 2034, according to the market research firm IMARC Group. Most of that growth is not happening in big cities alone. It reflects a country-wide shift in what parents consider a useful subject for their children to study outside school hours.

This isn’t just curriculum policy and market-size numbers. It is showing up as real, on-the-ground programming in other small Indian towns already. In May 2026, Indore, another tier-2 town, hosted a free public bootcamp called Tech Career Decoded, built around why the MERN stack and AI are a good starting point for beginners, open to students, freshers, and people switching careers. That is not something that happened in Manjeri, and this article makes no claim that it did. It is one concrete example of the same underlying shift Manjeri’s tuition centers are responding to, in their own smaller, more informal way.

Manjeri’s tuition centers are not creating this trend. They are responding to it, the same way they have always adjusted their offerings around whatever exam or skill families are asking about that year.

Why Silicon Jeri makes the shift feel closer to home

Manjeri also has a local reason to notice this trend earlier than some nearby towns. Silicon Jeri, the coworking campus in town, has made tech work visible in a way it was not before. Young people who once had to leave for Kochi or Bengaluru to find that kind of job can now see a version of it without moving.

That visibility plausibly changes conversations at home. A parent who once pushed only PSC prep may now ask a tuition center owner whether there is anything for coding or computer skills. This article cannot confirm how often that conversation happens in Manjeri specifically. What can be said is that the pattern fits a broader case already documented elsewhere in India. When the software company Zoho opened an office in Tenkasi, a small town in Tamil Nadu, local incomes and the local sense of what counts as an available career reportedly shifted over the years that followed. Manjeri’s version of that shift, if it is happening, would be expected to show up first in small, informal ways, like a tuition center testing a coding batch, not as a sudden citywide change.

It is also fair to say tier-2 developer communities nationally, including in towns with real momentum, are still being built. They are not yet close to what exists in Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Pune. Manjeri’s early, small-scale coding batches fit that earlier stage of the pattern, not a finished transformation.

Is PSC coaching actually being replaced?

No, not in any broad sense, and this matters more than the headline trend. Most tuition centers in Manjeri have not touched their PSC offerings at all. What is happening is addition, not replacement. A center might keep its full PSC batch running exactly as before and add a small coding class as an extra option.

There is a simple reason for that caution. PSC coaching is a known, steady business for these centers. Coding classes are newer and less tested locally. Owners have little reason to drop something reliable for something unproven. Think of it as a slow widening of the menu, not a swap.

What the new coding classes actually cover

Based on general observation of what is on offer, these are not advanced software development courses. They lean toward the basics.

• Programming fundamentals. Simple logic, basic syntax, and an introduction to how code actually works.
• Tech aptitude building. Problem solving and logical thinking skills that also help with other exams.
• Short, structured modules. Many run as weekend or evening add-ons rather than full daily courses.
• Younger student focus. School students and early college students appear to be the main audience so far.

This looks closer to an introductory coding bootcamp format than a full computer science program: short, focused, and aimed at basic comfort with code rather than deep expertise.

A quick way to weigh PSC coaching against a coding class

Plenty of students are not choosing one path over the other. They are keeping PSC prep as the steady plan and adding a coding class as a second option, in case a job tied to Silicon Jeri or a similar opportunity opens up closer to home.

None of this means Manjeri’s education market has flipped overnight. It means the market is widening, slowly and unevenly, the same way it tends to in any small town that gains a new kind of workplace nearby. Tuition centers, like most local businesses, follow demand rather than lead it. Right now demand for both PSC coaching and basic coding skills exists side by side, and most centers are trying to serve both without giving up what already works.

Related reading: this pattern echoes what is happening with the Manjeri graduates who stopped packing for Bangalore after college, and it is not limited to education. Even whether a Global Capability Center could ever set up in a place like Silicon Jeri shows how one campus can nudge conversations well beyond its own walls. For background on the exams that shaped this region’s coaching habits for decades, see this overview of Kerala Public Service Commission exams.