πce

Career counselling from grade one

Our solution is to bring an addition to the already set education system in urban areas of India by working alongside with various schools.

From an early age of 11 or 12 a set series of aptitude and logical tests will be taken every 2 weeks to assess a child’s capabilities and interests. Using this data we can guide a child in the right direction for them to achieve their maximum potential while also keeping in mind their interests. This will be done by providing him/her with a variety of opportunities in form of activities, field exposure, mentorship from professionals. Many kids are not certain as to what to do in future due to the lack of knowledge and exposure.

Thus, we aim to provide children with the required tools so they can be clear about their future and proceed to pursue the perfect career for themselves.

Problem Statement:

The Indian Schooling System serves more than 250 million students. Still its children have very little orientation towards the different career opportunities available and the path that will lead them to those. Source

One solution is career counselling but even then, if they are counselled during class IX and X, there mentality has already been heavily biased due to external factors and which shows in the results. Due to these biases, students are often pulled towards fields which actually does not suit them and by the time they realize this, it's too late. Thus students are made to take important choices in a very short span of time.

These programs are organized mostly in elite private institutions and are unavailable to the majority of students who are in government or ordinary private schools.

Consequences:

1. Dissatisfaction and low-performance among student in schools resulting in failures and drop-outs. 37% dropout rate in both urban and rural India. Major reason -"Child not interested in studies". Source
2. Due to over-saturation the current job scenario is filled with unskilled job seekers. 15 lakh engineers are produced in India annually while "80% of Indian engineers are not fit for any job". Source
3. Poor job satisfaction among the working class. 60% of employees hate their job. Source

Target Population

Direct beneficiaries of our solution are the "School-going children" from

• Urban background
• Rural Background 

In what ways are they currently underserved?

School going children from urban areas:

• Lack of orientation and knowledge about career paths and interests.
• Actively discouraged to follow their own aspirations while forced to commit to the conventional occupations.
• Work-pay disparity

School going children from rural/marginalized areas:

• Even though, schools and teaching initiatives are present in rural areas - they don't cater to them as per their interests and situation.

How will the solution address their needs?

Through our solution we aim to provide them,

• The knowledge of their interest areas
• Opportunities to explore different fields of interests
• Develop their social skills as per the real-world requirements

Furthermore, for the "rural school-going children" studying in elementary grades, we aim to devise a novel curriculum on the basis of the current curriculum followed for the students in similar grades in USA. Through this we aim to develop their in interests and establish their foundations with the help of "practical and play based studies".

Source

1. We have conducted surveys to understand the basis of career selection among students with the help of a self-modelled "psychometric analysis test".

Source

2. Also we have interviewed students to gain even more insight into the problem statement.

Source

Stage: Concept

Reason : Our idea currently is still in ideation stage with ongoing research, surveying and business model estimation. We haven't yet started its testing in the community.

Our solution is powered through machine learning and cloud computing.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a  data analysis method that automates the construction of analytical models. This is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, recognize patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention.

Application of ML in our project

Here we use Machine Learning algorithms in psychometric tests, assessments, which will identify the patterns in the child’s performance throughout several tests and identify his/her field of interests.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an application-based software infrastructure that stores data on remote servers accessible over the Internet. To understand how cloud computing works, you can divide cloud computing into front-end and back-end.

The front end allows users to access data stored in the cloud using an internet browser or cloud computing software. However, the backend is the main component of cloud computing that is responsible for the secure storage of data and information. This includes servers, computers, databases, and central servers.

Application of cloud computing in our project

Here, cloud computing is used to store the various performances of the child throughout several tests and store them in our main server. From which ML does the part of identifying the recurring patterns among the collected data. By which we find their field of interest and lead them through the right path.

Currently, we are not in service.

By the next year, we aim to implement it in the "Vellore" district of Chennai.

According to the census there are 1485 schools alone in Chennai out of which 326 are government schools. These many number of school propose a myriad of students whom we can potentially serve. Thus, we aim to serve a subset of this population once the following conditions are met with,

• Exact number of potential students in the targeted area
• Implementable prototype of our service

Due to the recent initiation of the idea we have started conducting surveys and gathering information to test our idea in a few school and once we establish our idea in the targeted district, we could potentially expand our horizons to many more schools including schools from other states and parts of the country.

Impact goals :

• Help around 5000 elementary students in urban area to explore different fields of interest
• Establish the foundation of students from the schools of at least one rural/marginalized section of India.

Measurement factors:

• Direct beneficiary review (eg.: Students)
• Indirect beneficiary review (eg.: Teachers, Managers, Guardians)

Sustainable development goals we are targeting currently are,

1. Physical interaction with students for furthering our research for our service, is currently hindered due to the growing pandemic. We have currently undertaken our survey through online means ("Typeform") for the urban students, but we believe that physically conducting the same will provide us with better insight. For the rural/marginalized section of students we are unable to set any survey in motion due to similar reasons.

2.Being a student we are not yet financially independent. But possibly these barriers will be removed by the coming years as we will be receiving funds/grants due to our other successful projects.

Background

We are a student team from India. Every individual in our team hails from a different background but the one thing that unites us all is the fact that we all have experienced the "Indian Education System" firsthand. We know the exact problems and shortcomings which students face while going through this process because we too were once or still are intimidated by these. 

Thus we believe that we can bring forward a positive change with the help of the current technology and our determination in order to provide the future generation a better place.

We wish utilize the received  The Pozen Social Innovation Prize for funding our current idea - πce. 

It would be used to:

• Further our research prowess
• Betterment of our self-developed psychometric test and ML algorithm by employing professional counsellor and psychologists to test and guide our project
• To provide opportunities for exploration to students in the "rural model" of our project.