The Central Board of Secondary Education recently announced the launch of the CBSE Career Guidance Portal. A much needed step to bridge the gap between students and career guidance.
The CBSE Career Guidance Portal offers students from class 9th to 12th, access to:
– Careers
– College directories
– Courses
– Scholarships
– Competitive entrance exams.
And, at NO EXTRA COST!
The Career Guidance Portal – Addressing the Questions
Despite the CBSE Career Guidance Portal being a great and much needed initiative, few fundamental questions still remain.
– Is aggregation of information enough to make optimal career decisions that will shape a student’s future?
– Will the portal address the common hurdles faced by students in making optimal career decisions?
- Mismatch with Personality and Learning Style
- Parent-Student Misalignment
- Lack of First-Hand Guidance
- No Backup Plan for Colleges
– How will CBSE’s Career Guidance Portal provide personalized counselling on a large scale?
– Does the portal establish a direct connection for students and colleges?
– Can a CBSE school fully implement the process of career guidance just through the portal?
Most importantly, will students be encouraged to opt for diverse career fields just by consuming information?
This structured information was always available online on multiple portals like Shiksha.com. So what makes the Career Guidance Portal different?
How CBSE has Answered Through their Career Guidance Portal
Now that we have asked the questions, let’s look at what CBSE has done to address this through the Career Guidance Portal.
For counselling support, CBSE will be conducting a digital training session of 1.5 hours for 2 teachers per school. The training will focus on making them acquainted with how to use the portal.
This will help those teachers resolve student queries about the portal. But will it enable them to offer support to students and parents with queries?
On specific careers?
Courses?
And colleges?
Moreover, career counselling has always been a certified specialization. Giving teachers the access to information may not serve the purpose entirely.
CBSE’s Career Guidance Portal – Hits and Misses
The career guidance portal offers students access to a personalized career dashboard. This is based on research and student’s preferences.
However, every child is different and personalization needs to be based on:
- Personality
- Aptitude
- Motivation
- Learning style
So, while giving access to information is good but it is only useful if mapped to the student’s traits.
Apart from this, a career decision in India or in the world is not made by the student alone. There are multiple people who are a part of this process.
Parents
One of the most important stakeholders in making career decisions, especially in India, are the parents.
Parent-Student misalignment has been among the biggest hurdles cited by students in making career choices. This brings a gap when compared to career choices suited to their interest areas and personality.
However, the CBSE portal doesn’t at present have parental involvement in the decision making.
Alumni
The other stakeholder whose involvement is invaluable, and have a special mention in the NEP 2020 are the Alumni.
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Students of The City Montessori School
There is no one better than the Alumni to provide first-hand guidance and mentoring to students.
Although it’s understandable that the CBSE’s Career Guidance Portal cannot enable Alumni guidance at such a large scale. However, adding mentor videos and sessions in each field can be beneficial to start with.
Importance of Connecting With Colleges
The Career Guidance Portal does offer students access to the college directories. However, these directory-based contacts can only be used by some students to seek information, considering the scale. Hence, it is only a sub-optimal way to connect.
Universities/Colleges have specific budgets allocated to their admissions departments to reach out to students. Either through fairs or digital media in order to provide relevant information and answer student queries.
A strong college connect can be established by engaging with these departments. Once done at scale, a platform for the same can be made accessible to students.
How Univariety is Bridging All Gaps
With our experience of working with 400+ schools, one thing is clear. The usage and impact of Career Guidance on students is only effective when driven by the school.
For CBSE schools to implement this, a structured Career Guidance Curriculum is needed. With clearly defined outcomes, this curriculum must be integrated into the school’s annual plan.
Without any school curriculum, student usage and impact levels will be low just with a centralised portal.
Watch some reputed schools talk about a holistic Career Guidance Program – Partner School Testimonial | Univariety Partners | Educators, Principal, Director | Success Stories
To conclude, it’s a step forward in the right direction by CBSE to launch the Career Guidance Program to create awareness.
However, if a school wants to empower its students to make personalize smart career decisions, a holistic Career Guidance Program is needed that includes the following elements:
- Individualized Counselling
- Parent Involvement for Alignment
- Alumni Guidance
- College/University Connect
- Career Guidance Curriculum
- Personalization based on Student Traits & Interest Areas
Read More on how we have moulded all these elements into our program –
https://www.univariety.com/app/school/career-guidance-system
We are excited that CBSE is now taking career guidance for students seriously. However, we believe that “A Job Worth Doing is Worth Doing Well”.
The PORTAL vs PROGRAM perspective is to help you understand what benefits the students and the schools in the most effective way.
