As the Maharashtra State Board exams concluded, teachers are raising concerns over the discontinuation of the aptitude test for Secondary School Certificate (SSC) students, which once helped students in making informed decisions about their higher education.
The State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT), which originally offered service of career-counselling, has claimed that it has asked schools to provide such services by setting up counselling centres. But teachers argue that adequate numbers of trainers are unavailable as necessary training for educators to conduct such tests has been stopped for many years, resulting in a shortage of qualified personnel.
According to teachers with implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, there are umpteen options of higher education for students post SSC. Anil Bornare, leader from BJP Teachers’ Association who has written to SCERT about restarting the service, said, “Taking such services privately is not affordable for a huge set of SSC students in the state. The government offered a service which is free-of-cost and has been really helpful for students across the state. But as it has stopped for more than 4 years now causing struggle for students and parents to make informed higher education choices.”
In a written response to Bornare’s letter, the SCERT stated that it is going to resume the original practice of optional career counselling service through DIET and it is in the process of preparing material for the same. “Additionally, it is also proposed to provide online aptitude tests for students. Whereas schools are instructed to provide such services to students by setting up career counselling centres,” stated SCERT’s response.
Originally, SCERT offered career counselling to SSC students through District Institute of Education and training (DIET), functioning in various parts of the state. They had trained teachers to offer career counselling. According to teachers, there was no awareness about this service among students and thus it remained to be very limited in nature. However, in 2016, the state government introduced mandatory aptitude tests for all SSC students through a private agency due to which all SSC students benefited for almost five years.
As SCERT is now planning to resume older practice of providing career counselling through DIET, but teachers argue that it is ineffective due to limited reach and lack of awareness among students.
Jaywant Kulkarni, a senior teacher from a school in Mumbai who is also trained counsellor, said, “Out of lakhs of students appearing for SSC, various DIETS are equipped to provide such a service to may be few hundreds, that is very minimal reach as opposed to aptitude tests for all SSC students. Furthermore, asking schools to offer such service is impractical as neither do they have funding for it nor do they have teachers trained to provide career counselling. The training given to teachers to provide career counselling has been stopped since 2017.”
Director of SCERT Rahul Rekhawar was unavailable to comment.