New Delhi, Feb 19 – The CBSE's decision to mandate career counselors in schools is a long-overdue recognition of students' needs, but its success will depend on how India develops professional capacity and quality standards.
For almost a century, Indian educational policies have acknowledged the importance of guidance and counseling in educational institutions. From the 1939 Acharya Narendra Dev Committee Report to the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP), various policy documents have emphasized that students need organized support to manage their education, personal lives, and careers.
However, even with this longstanding understanding, career guidance in schools has largely remained informal – integrated into general counseling, provided informally by educators, or reliant on an unregulated private sector.
The recent change to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)'s Affiliation Bye Laws marks a significant shift. By requiring schools to appoint a dedicated Career Counselor, separate from the wellness and counseling teacher, the CBSE has, for the first time, recognized career guidance as a specialized role within the educational system.
This change comes at a crucial time when academic pressures, student mental health, and uncertainty about future paths are closely linked.
The goal of this initiative is both timely and promising. However, whether India's educational institutions are adequately equipped to meet this expectation remains a crucial and unresolved issue.
Until now, the CBSE's affiliation guidelines mandated that schools hire a counseling and wellness teacher, implicitly suggesting that socio-emotional support alone would be sufficient to address students' academic and career-related issues.
The updated clause notably shifts away from this assumption. It recognizes that career guidance requires a unique set of skills, such as career assessment, understanding the job market, knowledge of higher education options, research abilities, and collaboration with parents, universities, and industry representatives.
This recognition aligns with global research indicating that career guidance provided by qualified professionals is significantly more effective than approaches that solely offer information.
It also reflects the actual experiences of students, for whom concerns about exams, subject streams, and future paths are often closely linked to mental health challenges.
The timing of the announcement is also important. In 2025, the Supreme Court of India delivered two significant rulings that highlighted the importance of mental health in educational settings.
One of these rulings provided a set of 21 guidelines, explicitly advocating for career guidance for both students and parents, and acknowledging the relationship between academic stress, career uncertainty, and mental health challenges.
Therefore, the CBSE's directive can be viewed as both a response to the NEP and a move to align with judicial concerns.
The notification implicitly recognizes a key limitation: the severe lack of trained career counselors in India. This is highlighted by the option for schools to appoint a “trained teacher” if a career counselor is not available, giving them a two-year period to obtain the necessary qualifications and skills.
While this provision is practical, it also reveals the weaknesses within the system. In India, career services are predominantly provided by individuals who lack formal training as career development professionals.
The field is mainly populated by teachers, social workers, human resource managers, IT professionals, industry representatives, and well-intentioned entrepreneurs.
Numerous private career counseling businesses are operated by self-taught individuals who entered the profession in response to increasing demand rather than through conventional training.
There are very few academic programs in India specifically designed to train career counselors. Currently, the country reportedly has only one dedicated postgraduate degree program in career guidance, and a small number of diploma and certificate courses.
Moreover, in guidance and counseling programs, career development is typically confined to a single paper or module.
The NCERT's International Diploma in Guidance and Counselling (IDGC) stands out as a significant exception, but even in this case, only a small segment of the curriculum addresses career development.
When considering the size of India's school system and the extensive need, the scale of these programs appears quite limited.
The CBSE's announcement outlines the minimum educational requirements for career counselors and states that the Board should provide 50 hours of capacity-building programs.
Although this is a significant move, it raises numerous unanswered questions. Who will create and deliver these programs? What criteria will be used to evaluate their quality and effectiveness? How will skills be assessed, certified, and regularly updated? What ethical principles will guide the field, and who will be responsible for enforcing them?
Currently, career guidance in India is neither well-professionalized nor well-regulated. There is no universally recognized competency framework, accreditation mechanism, or binding code of professional conduct.
While professional associations contribute positively through networking and advocacy, their ability to regulate practices remains limited. Without a reliable quality assurance framework, there is a significant risk that the initiative will devolve into mere procedural compliance rather than providing genuine support for students.
In practice, particularly in states with numerous schools and scarce resources, educators will continually bear a significant share of the burden for career counseling. This situation arises not from preference but from necessity.
Teachers are already guiding students and families, shaping aspirations, and managing expectations – frequently without adequate training, time, or support from their institutions. It is essential to recognize this reality rather than oppose it.
Making career guidance and counseling mandatory in teacher education programs and providing structured, practice-focused training in career counseling has become essential.
Additionally, flexible delivery models—such as school-complex or hub-and-spoke arrangements, in which trained professionals provide support to groups of schools on a part-time or consultative basis—might serve as a practical short-term solution.
It is also vital to establish clear boundaries. While information-based sessions can be conducted by trained educators or subject-matter experts, more in-depth career counseling—particularly when it relates to psychological vulnerability—should be provided by qualified professionals. Uninformed guidance, even with good intentions, can cause significant and lasting damage.
The CBSE directive is not the definitive solution, but it represents a crucial starting point. It indicates a long-overdue acknowledgement that making a career choice is not a singular decision or just an issue of information, but rather a developmental journey that necessitates skilled professional assistance.
To realize this potential, India must urgently focus on: enhancing and reinforcing academic programs in career guidance; establishing national competency and accreditation systems; integrating career guidance into educator training; and nurturing professional communities dedicated to ethical, context-aware practices.
If this institutional framework is thoughtfully and promptly constructed, CBSE's ambitious directive could mark a true turning point – not only for educational institutions but also for how India equips its youth to navigate work, identity, and purpose amid an unpredictable world.
(Professor Sachin Kumar is an Educationist and Career Development Practitioner with two and a half decades of experience)
