Rajasthan plans year-round career guidance for students: A test case for India’s ‘too-late’ counselling culture

Rajasthan repositions career guidance as a school function, not a one-time event. Image: AI generated

Career guidance in Indian schools usually arrives like an afterthought—and often too late. A motivational talk here, a glossy brochure there, an education fair in Class 12 when the student is already cornered by deadlines, exam pressure and family arithmetic. By then, “choice” is less a decision and more a crisis-management exercise.Rajasthan is now attempting to change that rhythm. According to an IANS report, the Rajasthan School Education Department is preparing a three-year roadmap to turn career guidance from a one-time formal activity into a continuous process for school students. The roadmap is being prepared jointly by the Rajasthan School Education Council (Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan), Jaipur, and the Rajasthan State Council of Educational Research and Training (RSCERT), Udaipur, with technical support from UNICEF Rajasthan and the Antarang Foundation, reports IANS.The department’s intention is to strengthen the state’s guidance system in a structured and sustainable way so students can make informed and confident career choices which are better aligned to changing job market demands.Dalchand Gupta, Deputy Director, Vocational Education, summed up the state’s framing in a line that will sound familiar to any parent who has watched a teenager scroll through endless possibilities without a method to choose. IANS has quoted him saying, “Children today have no shortage of options. What they need is the right guidance, suited to the present context, to help them decide which option is best for them.”

The NEP 2020 frame: Guidance as a capability, not brochure

The department is tucking the initiative into the vocabulary of NEP 2020, and it is choosing a telling phrase: “living a career, not just choosing one.” Read plainly, it is a critique of how Indian schooling has traditionally staged the career decision — as a single, high-pressure turn taken after board exams, when options have already narrowed and anxiety has already done its work. Rajasthan is signalling a different rhythm: Guidance as a repeatable practice. Something students return to over time, learning to link what they like, what they can do, and what they can become, to pathways that exist outside the classroom.

What’s on the table?

The proposal is attempting to turn career guidance into routine school work rather than an annual event—less a last-minute lecture and more a repeated process that students can return to as they grow. It begins with the student (interests, aptitude, abilities), widens into exposure beyond the classroom, and then tries to hold the whole thing up with a support ecosystem that includes teachers, parents and industry. Here’s what the department says this will include.Student-led mapping: Students will be encouraged to map their career paths based on interests, aptitude and abilities.Stronger school-level counselling: The role of career counsellors at the school level is to be strengthened and made more impactful.Hybrid and experiential guidance: Guidance will be delivered through hybrid learning modules, digital platforms and practical exposure, extending beyond classroom boundaries.A wider ecosystem: The department is working to create coordination among teachers, parents, students and industry.A wider outcome frame: The objective includes employability, but also decision-making skills needed “at every stage of life”.IANS also notes that a state-level workshop has been held to frame the strategy, with an emphasis on student-friendly communication and confidence-building. This is an early signal that tone and trust are being treated as part of the infrastructure, not an afterthought.

Career guidance for students in India: A snapshot

Career guidance in India is inching away from the “one seminar before boards” model towards something that looks, at least on paper, like a system—uneven across states and school types, but no longer entirely optional. NEP 2020 places guidance and counselling inside the schooling promise itself, envisioning trained counsellors or social workers linked to schools and school complexes who work continuously with students and parents, rather than arriving only at the last junction.In the implementation machinery, the centre’s school-education architecture has begun to formalise support roles: Samagra Shiksha guidelines provide for career counselling-linked academic resource personnel at the Block Resource Centre level, signalling that “guidance” is meant to have a place in the system’s staffing and support chain, not merely in school assemblies.Within the CBSE ecosystem, counselling and career support are being pushed as institutional mechanisms through the Career Guidance Dashboard and the Counselling Hub & Spoke School Model for 2025–26—an attempt to standardise availability even where smaller schools struggle to appoint full-time counsellors.Alongside norms and structures, the state is also building tools. The Ministry of Education’s school wing hosts “career cards” for early exposure to options, and has backed My Career Advisor (with NCERT–PSSCIVE and the Wadhwani Foundation) as a scalable guidance resource. Parallelly, the Ministry of Labour & Employment’s National Career Service (NCS) offers career-related services, including the ability to browse and book counsellors, supported by Model Career Centres.

From roadmap to routine

Rajasthan’s three-year roadmap is, at its core, an attempt to pull career guidance out of the Class 12 emergency room and place it back into the everyday life of school. The state is not claiming that students lack ambition or options; it is saying they lack a process—one that helps them connect interests, aptitude and abilities to real pathways, with counsellors and practical exposure doing more of the work than last-minute advice. This also sits inside the wider national shift under NEP 2020, which talks about guidance and counselling as a school function, not an optional extra. Yet India’s persistent gap is not policy language; it is routine—time in the school calendar, trained adults, and the confidence to let students explore without forcing early closure. That is why Rajasthan’s promise will be judged less by the elegance of the roadmap and more by whether it becomes a habit that survives the board-year churn: Repeated touchpoints, student-friendly communication, and a system that holds even when exams and timetable pressure push schools back towards the old model—one talk, one brochure, one hurried decision.(With inputs from IANS)