Need robust counselling system for secondary school students

With knowledge exploding in almost every domain and new career opportunities emerging within each field of activity, students of Class 9 and Class 10 today need serious counselling help to plan their careers. 

Unlike systems in the UK or in the U.S, once a student here takes up a science branch in Class 11, he or she naturally gravitates towards engineering or medicine as default careers; and in case this options fail, the students go ahead and take up a Bachelor of Science degree. While the system hardly offers any flexibility for students to change careers, students are also unaware of emerging opportunities. 

Any student who gets high marks in Class 10, is “pushed” by the school to take a Science stream. Those with “relatively lesser” marks are asked to take Humanities or Commerce, as if they are lesser options, only for people with lesser academic intensity. 

That’s why counselling at secondary school level is required for all students, as well as their parents so that individual learners can find a robust career or educational pathway. 

Unfortunately, most school boards do not offer all-round counselling nor do they create the environment for helping students find their calling or career path. This means, students of the rural schools or their parents remain ignorant of emerging careers in different domains, and how students can prepare themselves for a sunny future. 

It is high time, schools boards —be it in the centre or in different States—understand the need for creating a strong counselling system in all schools— manned 

by seasoned professionals, with a strong knowledge of the developments in different fields. 

The counselling system needs: 

Persons with a sound knowledge of developments happening in different fields and what kind of technologies are impacting each of them. 

Experts who can offer wholesome training to develop hard and soft skills of students, offer psychological support to develop the right attitude and aptitude needed for forthcoming careers. 

Trainers who can help the students understand the requirements for different careers – like mathematics and science for engineering, strong drawing and sketching skills for architecture, strong language basics for literature and humanities. 

Persons who regularly follow government policy on education. Such a system should also be able to handhold parents who are today influencers of students in careers and higher study and take the right decisions. Fortunately, counselling need not be very expensive for any Board today. A lot of material is available online and technology can help reach large sets of people and thus support rural students especially in taking quality decisions about their future study pathways.