Kottayam: The iconic school youth festival, that remained cancelled for two years due to the pandemic, is all set to make a grand comeback. The ‘Ulsav’ software that would help conducting the youth festival hassle-free is already ready. The department of general education has instructed to conduct the school-level competitions this month itself and to schedule the sub-district and district-wise competitions for next month.

In most schools, the competitions will be conducted this week. Kozhikode will host the school youth festival from 3 – 7 January 2023. The names and items of the participants could be registered in ‘Ulsav’. The item code list, including the newly introduced items, is available in the software.

A student can participate in up to three individual items and two group items. In the High School category, there are 89 items in 15 categories. English, Kannada and Tamil poetry writing and English skit have been newly included. Meanwhile, in the higher secondary level, there are 98 items in 14 categories.

Items like Kathakali, Ottanthullal, folk dance and mimicry will be common. Earlier, competitions were separately held for girls and boys.

The sub-district level competitions of the science fair will be held next month and the district level competitions of the sports festival will be held in the last week of October and first week of November.