An exhibition of models based on skill subjects and a career guidance festival were hosted by a school where students were guided to career prospects beyond the
conventional route.

Mahadevi Birla World Academy hosted the CBSE Skill Expo & Guidance Festival for the Kolkata region recently.

Students from 30 schools in and around Calcutta and from Guwahati and Bhubaneswar participated in the festival.

The event encouraged an interface between industry and academia, said teachers.

“Medicine and engineering are not the only career options. Now, students can opt for different subject combinations cutting across streams,” said Anjana Saha, principal, Mahadevi Birla World Academy.

A humanities student can choose biology and psychology as combination subjects. A student in the science stream can opt for fashion studies, the principal said.

“The silos of streams are breaking, making way for more interdisciplinary studies right at the school level,” said Tanushree Majumder, the coordinator of the skill expo
and academic coordinator at Mahadevi Birla World Academy.

Some skill subjects offered by the CBSE are information technology, beauty and wellness, fashion studies, tourism, financial markets management, banking and insurance, web applications, data science, early childhood care and education, food nutrition, dietetics and AI.

“The skills expo provided a chance for the students to showcase their creativity and best practices along with half-a-day session on how to plan their careers and what are the most common mistakes that one makes when choosing a career,” said Ravinder Pal Singh, joint secretary (skill education), Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

Teachers said students have to be guided to make informed choices.

“On many occasions, they would choose subjects without understanding what it entails,” said Saha.

The endeavour is to make students aware of what exists around them and what it will be like when they join the workforce five or six years later, said Singh.

How a student uses the knowledge he or she has acquired will be the key in the years to come, said Singh.

The career guidance festival built a channel of communication between the students and the people from industry, said Singh.

A total of 47 models were on display.