New Delhi, Oct 19 (PTI) Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia felicitated 250 students of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women (IGDTUW) on Tuesday for providing guidance to over 1,000 girl students under the Delhi government’s education mentoring programme.
The programme was launched in March this year and under it, engineering students of IGDTUW enrolled to provide STEM mentoring for six months to girl students of Delhi government schools.
A total of 250 girls studying engineering at the university became mentors for more than 1,000 girls studying science in class 11 and 12 in Delhi government schools.
“The programme was launched when the deputy CM looked at past years’ data and realised that year after year girls were outperforming boys in the board examinations, yet a very small percentage of these girls was choosing to study science in class 11. For context, more than 1.5 lakh students of Delhi government schools write the board exams each year. Out of these, only 5-6,000 are girls from Science stream,” an official statement said.
“Even those girls who are enrolled in science stream, often do not have access to information and guidance about careers at large and engineering field in particular,” it added.
Under the education mentoring programme, girls who had recently cleared the JEE exam had the opportunity to share their experience, learnings and advice with students who were preparing for the same exam.
The mentoring curriculum included various aspects of STEM higher education — the available choices of courses in STEM, the entrance exams, the examination patterns, preparation needed for entrance exams, resources available for preparation, financial aid schemes of government, how to deal with exam pressure and stress, time management, techniques for better focus among other themes.
“In a survey conducted before the programme, it was found that only 38 per cent girls knew about the timeline for all their target entrance exams, and after the programme this number went up to 91 per cent. Similarly, only 21 per cent students had any idea about the nature of papers they had to answer to clear the entrance exams, but later this number went up to 99 per cent, the statement said.
“Students also reported that their communication, self-motivation, confidence and time management skills significantly improved after continuous mentoring for the past six months,” it added.