Study on understanding stream choices of high school students in relation to career aspirations and academic stress in Pilani, Rajasthan India

Education helms at top for the social development of any country and the alignment of educational interests and skills of senior secondary students is of prime importance to have them opt for a career aligned with their educational qualification. This research tries to contribute in probing the reasons for the stream choices of the students who have recently entered into secondary education and what needful actions can be taken for helping students take an informed decision for the stream choice. The research is based on theoretical framework of familial background, social reputation, comparative and competitive mentality, intellectual and superiority bias with meritocracy. The mixed method approach is used to understand the stream choices, academic expectations, career aspirations and destressing mechanisms for the students from both science and commerce stream with the help of an questionnaire for 50 participants and semi structured interviews for 10 participants. The results show that students have freedom in making their choices about stream choices but students express lack of career counselling facility in the school and explain that its needed. Interestingly the results show that parents extend support to choice of their children but the idea of social reputation is an impediment that may push parents to intervene in the choices of their children to alter it. Although the results cannot be generalised but it will be good to address the issue of developing programs for effective career counselling for the students in school on a regular basis giving access to them post their middle school completion and also keeping the needs of students in centre while designing motivational programs such as aradhana.