CHENNAI: Building on last year’s efforts to ensure students get proper guidance while opting for higher education courses, the school education department has started career guidance cells in all higher secondary schools across the state as part of Nan Mudhalvan scheme.
Each cell will include headmasters, teachers with career guidance training, former students, school management committee chairperson and members and also students who are part of the National Service Scheme.
The department is conducting state-level training for one career guidance cell from each district at present, following which, training at the district and block levels will be organised. The career guidance cells will be active in schools from May 6, said school education department officials.
The career guidance cell members will have the necessary information to guide the students, including list of scholarships available, list of colleges in the state and districts, and old cut-off marks. “They will also provide counselling to parents if they are hesitant to send their children to good colleges in other states or districts. While our gross enrolment ratio (GER) is around 50 at present, carrying out these efforts systematically for the next few years will help improve it,” said a senior official from the department.
In order to ensure that the students join higher education after Class 12, the department officials attempted to trace more than 10,000 government school students who failed to join higher education courses last year. SCERT also trained higher education teachers regarding career guidance last year and said that students in classes 9 to 12 would be provided career guidance classes four times a week.