Team Herald
PANJIM: Goa government has decided to make aptitude test and career guidance compulsory for students of standard Xth and XIIth from the academic year 2020-21 to help the students assess their areas of interest so that they can chose and pursue the right career oriented courses.
Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant on Saturday said that directions have been issued to Directorate of Education and Directorate of Higher Education to make it compulsory for school students to have aptitude test and career guidance in the institutions from the coming academic year onwards.
“There is vast difference in the qualification that the students obtain and the jobs they do thereafter. There is complete mismatch. We need to bridge this gap,” Sawant said while inaugurating Job Fair organised by Department of Labour and Employment.
He said that to clear any sort of confusion, a student might have to choose the courses or career, it is very important that they go through aptitude test and career guidance in the institutions itself.
“And we are working in that direction. We have decided to make aptitude test and career guidance compulsory for school students. It is our vision to help the students reach their true potential,” Sawant said adding that the tests have to be conducted in June itself, when he new academic year begins.
There are currently 18,000 students in SSC while another 17,000 in HSSC.
Further, chief minister urged students to be innovative. “It is very painful and shameful to see that students who hold degrees in IT, MBA, post-graduation are jobless. It is not that there are no jobs but, the problem lies with the skill. Hence, we need to be innovative and make our own innovations in the form of Startups,” he said.
“Rather than being job seekers, the students with such high qualification need to be job providers,” he said as he referred to the fact that Goa ranked third in the country in innovations as per NITI Aayog report.
