Allur - Education Program
Backdrop
It is estimated that at least 7 million jobs that are open due to skill gap. Preparing rural students, particularly girl students at early levels of education with training on employability skills would help bridge this gap. APMAS has selected Ramakrishna High School, Allur to run a Career Counselling pilot program to understand the impact of such programs on rural students.
Ramakrishna High School, Allur is one of the oldest established and highly reputed government aided schools in Andhra Pradesh. The school was established in 1928 by Sri Allampati Ram Reddy and Sri Nukalpati Krishna Reddy. The school is a private aided school, supported by local community and school alumni. It has been observed that majority of the students who are studying in this school are from below poverty line category. The school in addition to government support receives support from Individuals from the village who are supporting the meritorious and needy students of the school through scholarships. School currently has a total of 23 teaching and 2 non-teaching staff. Below is a table showing the aggregate enrolment numbers.
Due to a variety of socio-economic reasons that are beyond the control of school staff and administration, many of the students are not equipped with basic skills required to enter job market after graduating from High School.
APMAS Allur Project’s goal is to run a pilot program that can help bridge this gap and, in the process, gain deeper understanding of employability skill gap for future refinement of this project.
Interventions
APMAS partnered with Ignis Careers a leading educational organization which focuses on imparting innovative life skills training to students. With their support we started a Career Counselling workshop for students of standard 8-10th in Ramakrishna High School, Allur. Over a period of 3 months the innovative Career Counselling workshop was conducted at the end of which a career fair was conducted by the students displaying the knowledge they gained over the 3 months which included models on the preferred choice of career and the path they need to choose in order to achieve in that career.
Way Forward
With the success of the career counselling program, APMAS is working with the school management to identify other potential areas of collaboration to provide holistic education for the students.
