NEW DELHI: More boys called up the CBSE counselling helpline with stress-related queries during exams than girls, statistics have revealed.
The Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) annual outreach programme to help students beat exam stress begins in February every year and provides counselling to students till April.
However, students continue calling the helpline even after results are announced and the counselling team tries to address their stress-related queries ranging from break-up issues, the parent-children argument to difficulty in memorising, nervousness and others As per official statistics, the helpline received nearly three times more calls from boys than from girls from February 1 to May 16.
The board provided counselling to a total of 3467 callers this year of which only 74 were career related calls.
While 373 parents called the helpline, remaining 3094 calls were from students out of which only 962 were girls where as the number of calls received from boys was 2132.
Seventeen calls were received from specially-abled children and parents of 8 specially-abled children called the helpline, according to the helpline data.
Of the calls received from students, 1523 were from class X while 1431 were from class XII.
140 students from other classes also called the helpline. The board also received 177 calls from students of other boards, maximum of them being from UP.
While 472 of the student callers were from government schools, 2509 were from private schools. 113 private candidates also called the helpline.
A total of 91 counsellors based in India and abroad answered the queries of students this year received on toll free helpline --800 11 8004 which was accessible from any part of the country from 8 am to 10 pm.
Principals, trained counsellors, psychologists and special educators were part of the counselling team.
While 71 of them were available in India, 20 were in Nepal, Saudi Arabia (Al-Khobar), Oman, the United Arab Emirates (Dubai, Sharjah, Ras Al-Khaimah), Kuwait, Singapore, Qatar and Japan.