This report was mainly born out of curiosity to understand the state of public education in Kerala. Even though current data was not available, I was able to get some stats from back in 2006 via the Kerala Department of General Education website. Once I had this data, next I wanted to compare it against public education in Karnataka, which seems to have or at least there is a general perception that they have progressed more in the last 10 years. I wanted to see if the claimed progress has gone beyond Bangalore, and to me a good indicator of that is the state of public education. Even though I was able to get the stats from the Karnataka Department of Education website, pretty much like Kerala, they only had stats from back in 2006. The report you see above is the comparison, and here are some of my observations:

Obervations

1. Public High School Education for both states end at grade 10, unlike private schools which go till 12th grade. This is something that needs to change so even public school kids get 12 years of education. Correction: Just learned that what used to be pre-degree offered by colleges in Kerala, is now integrated into schools as Higher Secondary Education(HSE). Which is great, so kids in Kerala are now receiving 12 years of education. I will have to dig up some stats on how many complete 12th now.
2. Kerala has a more efficient school system, with most kids making it through to high school and finishing high school (grade 10 12). There seems to be something strange about Karnataka, lot of students in UP but very few in High School(grade 10). So, I am not sure what's going on in Karnataka.
3. I could not get a sense of the quality of education, both states have local SSLC boards. Maybe switching public schools to much better central boards like CBSE or ICSE might be better, and will put public school students at par with private school students.
4. Karnataka seems to have gone on a school building spree, there are a lot of schools, but they are not really educating a lot of kids till completion of high school. Could these low numbers be why they highlight literacy rate in Bangalore more?
5. Another area of drastic difference is the number of high school teachers, Kerala has 8 times more high school teachers than Karnataka. This could probably mean that either there is a shortage of high school teachers in Karnataka or not enough subjects are being taught.
6. Lack of current stats. The numbers I had to deal with are from back in 2006, and neither state has latest number on their websites. Also the presentation of the data is very poor. So, some of our brilliant/creative IT,web and visualization experts please volunteer and help these states get better at collecting and presenting data online.
7. And finally a call to action: people on the web in Kerala and Karnataka, please visit your local public schools and update us all with images, videos, audio, and reports on the state of education.

Data Source

Kerala: www.education.kerala.gov.in Karnataka: karnatakaeducation.gov.in