The global survey shows that in overall career choices most students — 23.5 per cent — opted for engineering.
New Delhi: More girls than boys in India want to become journalists, psychiatrists/psychologists, teachers and lawyers, a recently conducted global survey has revealed.
More boys chose to be software developers, engineers, pilots and entrepreneurs in the survey.
When it comes to overall career choice, however, engineering and medicine topped the chart.
As per the survey, out of all the students who want to be psychiatrists, 91.2 per cent are girls and 8.8 per cent are boys, and for journalism, it was 77.7 per cent girls against 23.3 per cent boys.
Similarly, out of all the students who wanted to be software developers, 83.4 per cent boys showed interest as against 16.6 per cent girls. For engineering, it was 78.9 per cent boys as compared to 21.9 per cent girls.
In terms of overall career choices, however, most students — 23.5 per cent opted for engineering. In the overall choice graph, 5.1 per cent wanted to be journalists and 3.8 per cent wanted to be psychiatrists.
The survey was conducted on almost 20,000 teachers and students from around the world. Besides India, the survey was carried out in the US, China, Pakistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Indonesia and Argentina.
Close to 3,800 students from India were a part of the survey. The respondents were in the age-group of 5-19 years.
Indians study harder
It also shows that compared to children from other countries, Indian students are most studious and take most number of extra classes. They also participate in most number of extra-curricular activities such as sports (72 per cent).
“Indian students cram more activities into their schedules than their peers in the 10 countries surveyed for Cambridge International’s Global Education Census 2018,” says the survey report.
“Almost two-thirds of Indian students take extra tuition for key subjects after school. They also rank highly on the time spent doing homework, with 40 per cent spending 2-4 hours on their homework every day while a good 37 per cent spend the same time over the weekend too,” it says.
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Mathematics, physics and chemistry are the top subjects for which Indian children take extra classes.
According to the report, the survey illustrates a change in culture and teaching methods in Indian schools.
“The census also reveals that Indian students are not only driven academically but also make use of other learning opportunities to pursue their own interests and passions,” it adds.
This report has been corrected to indicate that a higher percentage of young girls want to be psychologists and journalists than young boys, and this number is not absolute. The error is regretted.