The ninth edition of CII Education Summit, celebrating industry-academia collaborations took off to a great start on Wednesday. Industry stalwarts such as Hero Corporate Service chief and chairman of CII Education Council, Mr Sunil Kant Munjal and Co-Chairman Dr BVR Mohan Reddy were joined by leaders of academic world and heads of organisations such as the Chairman of All India Council for Technical Education, Prof Anil D Sahasrabudhe; Commissioner of Kendriya Vidyalaya Mr Santosh Kumar Mall and Chairperson of National Council for Teacher Education Dr Satbir Bedi.
The highlight of the first day of the summit was the launch of CII partnership with IIT Madras on career guidance framework for school children. According to rough estimates, there are approximately 40 million children in the age group of 13-18 years in India. Having entered grade 8 and studying for senior secondary and higher education, they are at an age where handholding and guidance on the right stream to choose for further education can make or mar their careers. Vanilla counselling on career choices available is handicapped by inability to scale.
Also, career guidance is rarely available for non-English speaking population in India. To address this issue, CII has joined hands with an IIT Madras incubated start-up BodhBridge. It provides career guidance through a tool called My Choice My Future (MCMF) which does a psychometric analysis of students and basis their aptitude, provides counselling for a right career through trained and certified counsellors across India.
The tool is scientifically validated and is available in seven Indian languages -- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada. Training is done by resource personnel from IIT Madras. The online career guidance tool helps learners and even young professionals identify the right career paths in Indian context, by assessing their personality in relation to their notional career interests and choices, which could be quite different from what their personality may indicate.
CII will work with IIT Madras in amplifying the reach of this tool. Through its network of state and central offices, it will ensure that the benefits of this unique career guidance and counselling framework reach each and every child of the country.
Speaking on CII-IIT Madras partnership for MCMF, Mr Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman of CII Education Council said, “Career counselling in regional languages will serve a hugely underserviced sector in our country. Sustained efforts in ensuring the spread and reach of this guidance will lead to improvement in employability of graduates several years down the line when these children will step out of the academic world armed with skills of their choice and ready to shape their future.”
Founder and Chief Executive Office of BodhBridge Mr Balaraju Kondaveeti, an alumni of IIT Madras said, "We at IIT Madras believe that children are under huge stress due to the pressure on them to take career tracks that either their parents or teachers suggest without a scientific understanding. Hence we decided to support by developing a career framework that not only tests the students but provides individual reports to the students as well as career guidance is also provided.”
Speaking on this occasion, Prof. V. Srinivasa Chakravarthy, faculty coordinator for school education related initiatives at IIT Madras who has been working on vernacular science content for a decade said “An inspired career choice can be a means of self-discovery and self-fulfilment. It will also result in peak performance by the concerned individual and therefore positively contribute to nation building.”
13 November 2019
New Delhi