9 pc students in Mumbai's civic schools want to take up

Over 9 per cent students of the civic-run schools in the megapolis Mumbai want to take up farming as a profession, followed by defence and police services, says a report of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

The result of the survey, conducted by the BMC, is surprising, as such a percentage of students in the country's financial capital have shown inclination towards the farming profession, a senior civic official said.

Of the 12,500 students of class 9 surveyed in 210 schools, 9.46 per cent say they want to be agriculturists, 7.3 per cent aim to join the Armed Forces while 7.25 per cent are keen on police services, as per the report of the BMC's career counselling programme.

Besides, 6.99 per cent students want to be paramedics while 4.11 per cent want to take up the accountancy as their profession, said the report released on Sunday.

The BMC, in a bid to make the class 9 students 'ready for future', partnered with city-based NGO Antarang last year and started providing career counselling to them.

"The students were asked about their career orientation and 9.46 per cent of them showed interest in the field of agriculture," the official said.

"Even we were quite surprised to know that a big number of students want to be agriculturists, despite the fact that most of them have never been to farms," he said.

The results of the counselling programme were shared with parents individually, he said.

During the counselling, members of the school staff and the NGO developed a rapport with students, interacted with them and then asked which profession they wanted to take up after their class 10 exams.

While students of private schools can afford to go to coaching classes for better career guidance, those in civic- run institutions are generally deprived of it because of their poor financial conditions.

"Therefore, the BMC thought of asking students about their career plans and planned the counselling session so that we could start working now for their better future. These sessions will help them in career-building," the official said.