The Role of Coaching classes in Student Counselling

It is said that knowledge is power. But what makes knowledge even more powerful is what you do with it. Indian students seem to lack this concept as the Indian education system is always under the hammer for being competitive. School focuses more on quantitative learning which results in long school hours, heavy school bags and theoretical studies. This has conditioned most of the students to believe that extracurricular activities aren’t important and that getting good grades is what preparing for college is all about.

The problem is school don’t have someone to tell their students that this isn’t true. This task is usually done by counsellors. The bigger concern is that most of the schools are lacking this counselling cells that enables counsellors to guide students. Around 85% of students are only concerned about which stream to take for higher education whereas 92% of students have no idea about different career options available according to their streams. Coaching classes cater to all these needs of the students and give them a better insight about their choices by providing them with career and personal counselling.

There is a paramount need of career counselling for students coming to coaching classes because

1. They spend more than 3 hours each day in classes. Through daily monitoring coaching classes will be able to identify the real potential at an early stage and students will be guided towards the right career path.
2. Through their academic performances and aptitude tests analysis can be done for students which will help them find out their interests and also their strengths and weaknesses.
3. Schools are only emphasising on getting good grades but very few schools are having career counsellors who will be guiding students and telling them about the different streams available and different jobs which come under that section. In coaching classes, there are trained teachers only assigned for career counselling who will take the inputs from the student and give them guidelines to understand the particular stream they would want to study.

Role of coaching classes in personal and career counselling

Counselling has become extremely important for School students as it has a huge role in shaping their personalities and bringing out the best in them. 

1. Coaching classes help students understand how to use the right medium for exposure of knowledge. They will guide them to use social media effectively to know different career options present in India and abroad.
2. By conducting aptitude test classes will come to know about the interest of each student which will help them to have an insight of their calibre and interest. Lastly, it will majorly help prepare the students for life after school.
3. Self-assessment includes observing the abilities, areas of interest, analytical skills and personality of the learner. They help the students to self assess their performances by keeping a record of the same and tell them about broad career options. Special educators present in the coaching classes will help the students to equip with all recent trends,  current developments in different streams and to know the demands and financial prospectus of their field of interest.
4. They are guided well to deal with psychological and personal problems which can have a huge impact on their studies. Through Personal counselling sessions, students will develop better analytical thinking skills which help them to deal with their personal issues effectively.
5. The coaching classes will escort students for the overall development by helping them to acquire the right attitude and interpersonal skills through various discussions and activities adhering to different job trends to set their own goals, make their own decisions, plan and take necessary actions to achieve those goals.
6. Calling the ex-students to speak to the students. Aspiring students can learn from the experience of the seniors who can share the preparatory activities around academics, webinars which helped them, extracurricular activities they participated in, test preps etc. Getting in touch with the seniors who crossed the same roads a few years ago will help them to understand the commitment it takes to get into to certain University for a particular stream. 

Students, as well as their parents, should begin career planning right from class 10th because, after this level, only a particular stream could be followed and career options will be limited to their choice of the stream only. The stream choice also depends on career planning and interests of students. The coaching classes facilitate the students and give them a solution-centric counselling according to their abilities and interests and help the students forge a connection with self.