BHOPAL: The MP Board of Secondary Education’s helpline, which became functional from February 1, has received as many as 4,600 calls from students as well as their parents over the past 20 days. This means an average of 230 calls per day.
Interestingly, the helpline is not only getting calls from different places in MP but from other Hindi-speaking states like Bihar, UP and Punjab as well.
The class 10 and 12 examinations of MP Board of Secondary Education are beginning from March 1 and 2 respectively. Since 2007, the Board runs helpline for students on toll free number 18002330175 from February to July. Talking to The Free Press Journal, Hemant Verma, in-charge of the helpline centre, says
“We have been deluged by calls. Besides, we also provide face to face counselling” adding that “sometimes we also get calls from students of CBSE schools and even colleges and universities. We run the helpline in four shifts – from 8 am to 12 midnight. In the past, we started night shifts from March but this year we have started them from February due to the spurt in the number of calls. We have 20 counsellors with four working in each shift. We also do career counselling after the results are out.
Counsellor Sindhu Dholpure, who is working in the morning shift says, boys outnumber the girls among the callers. As for the socio-economic background, , most of them are from the middle class. “Students of middle class families are more worried about their marks. They feel that if they won’t get above 85 per cent, they won’t be able to get admissions in any decent college, besides losing the laptop which the government gives. We also get calls from parents, she said.
She said that they also have contact number of specialists of various subjects which they offer to the students. “Some of them called up to thank after they felt relieved by talking to the subject specialists”, said Dholpure.
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‘Jio’ villain of the piece!
The councellor said that the free data being offered by Jio SIM has compounded problems for the parents. “Many parents tell us that their children were already glued to their cell phones. Jio has made the situation worse”.
