First career guidance portal for school children launched in Rajasthan :

In a first in India, Rajasthan government has launched a Rajiv Gandhi career guidance portal to counsel children on their future and choice of professional life as they reach their adolescence. The portal has been launched to bring a range of careers to the students enrolled in schools. 

It is a big step of the government towards providing employment-oriented education to students.The portal is developed with support from UNICEF and is a first-of-its-kind in the country.

The portal will provide information to students on over 200 vocational, 237 professional courses besides online information on over 455 employment areas, 10,000 colleges in the country, 960 scholarship schemes and over 955 entrance examinations.

The UNICEF is supporting the state department of education to develop this career guidance portal for children in secondary and higher secondary schools. The programme is aimed to address student needs in the educational stream so that they are able to choose a career path matching their aspirations, interest, inclination and aptitude, and also to link them with mechanisms such as scholarships, skill development programs, internship and apprenticeship opportunities and the like, in the pursuit of their career choices. 

In experts’ view, this is expected to ameliorate the high drop-out rates observed at various stages in the educational system. It is also aimed at improving retention in jobs. The portal is expected to benefit approximately 14,290 government schools of Rajasthan and provide career information to 23 lakh students from classes 9 to 12. 

UNICEF claim that it will look forward to support the department of education to build capacities of teachers, facilitate the use of the portal by students and integrate this tool as part of the secondary school education system and also like to request the Madrassa board, National Institute of Open schools and Tribal Area Development to view the portal and introduce it to their students as a means to enhance their horizon of opportunities.

It is worth mentioning that this portal was constructed after understanding the needs, awareness and perspective of students, teachers and system functionaries. This need assessment study highlighted that the two largest sources of career information for students are teachers, this is about 89 per cent of respondents, while family members continue to be the highest source at 91 per cent. According to the study, 69 per cent of students also mentioned they were using internet for their queries relating to career and their means of accessing internet was through shared family phones. The behavior of internet access indicates that adolescents will learn to use the career guidance portal as well.