Lucknow: For thousands of students sitting in classrooms across Uttar Pradesh, the person walking in one day may not be a teacher, but an IAS, IPS or IFS officer carrying years of experience, failures, struggles and lessons from a journey that eventually led to one of the country's most coveted careers.
The Yogi Adityanath government is now planning to bring such experiences directly to intermediate-level students. Under a new initiative, young officers of the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service posted in districts will visit at least one school every month and interact with students about careers, competitive examinations, higher education and life beyond school.
Career Guidance Beyond Textbooks And Coaching Centres
The idea is to take career guidance beyond textbooks and coaching centres and allow students to hear directly from officers who have themselves faced competitive examinations, uncertainty and difficult choices.
The government believes that these interactions can give students something that a conventional career lecture often cannot provide: a realistic understanding of what it takes to pursue a goal and the confidence to believe that it is achievable.
Additional Chief Secretary, Secondary Education, Partha Sarathi Sen Sharma has directed officials to ensure effective monitoring of the programme. Divisional commissioners will periodically review its implementation, while district inspectors of schools will coordinate between schools and officers to ensure that the visits are conducted properly.
Students To Engage In Interactive Sessions
The government has specifically asked that these sessions should not become formal speeches. Instead, students should be encouraged to ask questions and participate in discussions.
An officer could talk about how he or she prepared for competitive examinations, dealt with failure, managed time, maintained discipline or chose a career. Students would then have an opportunity to ask the questions that often remain unanswered in a classroom: How should one begin preparing for the UPSC or UPPSC? How many hours should one study? What if the first attempt fails? How can a student from a modest background compete with those who have access to expensive coaching?
Sessions To Cover UPSC, JEE, NEET And Other Exams
The sessions will cover preparation for examinations including UPSC, UPPSC, UPSSSC, NDA, JEE, NEET and CUET, besides other state-level competitive examinations and recruitment through the Uttar Pradesh Education Service Selection Commission.
But the programme is not being restricted to government jobs.
Students will also be introduced to opportunities in higher education, technical and vocational education, employment, entrepreneurship and startups. Government schemes for young people will also be explained to them.
Focus On Life Skills, Cyber Security And Stress Management
The proposed conversations will also address subjects that increasingly influence the lives of young people, including financial skills, communication skills, business management, cyber security, de-addiction, stress management and building self-confidence.
For many students, particularly those studying outside major cities, direct access to senior administrators can itself be a significant experience. An officer's account of his or her own journey can make a distant career appear more attainable.
The programme will be organised through a monthly calendar prepared by district magistrates. All young IAS, IPS and IFS officers posted in a district are expected to participate. Districts will submit a report to the Secondary Education Department by the fifth of every month, detailing the schools visited, officers who participated, subjects discussed and suggestions received from students.
District magistrates have also been asked to personally review the quality of the programmes and introduce innovations wherever possible.
The initiative comes at a time when career choices are expanding rapidly and students are under increasing pressure to make decisions about their future at an early age. A conversation with an officer who has experienced both success and setbacks could therefore become more valuable than a routine motivational lecture.
For a student sitting in a government school classroom, the most powerful message may simply be that the person standing before them once sat where they are sitting today.
The government hopes that such encounters will help students set realistic goals, develop better study habits and make informed career choices. More importantly, the direct interaction is expected to build confidence and a positive outlook among young people.
The larger message of the initiative is simple: sometimes, inspiration does not have to come from a book or a speech. It can come from a person who has walked the difficult road first and is willing to tell the next generation how the journey was made.
