IPS officer Abhyanand addresses the career counselling programme in Patna on Saturday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, July 2: The role of parents is as important for the students preparing for competitive examinations, as that of the coaching centres they attend.

While addressing a gathering of over 2,500 students at a daylong career counselling workshop at SK Memorial Hall, additional director-general of police (ADG), training, Abhayanand said the roles of both parents and coaching centres are very important for students preparing for IIT, medical, law, defence and other competitive examinations.

The workshop was organised by IITians for Youth, a group of 24 IITians from IIT-Kharagpur, which works to provide career counselling for all available career options in India to the students. The IITians in the group are mostly from Bihar.

Abhayanand, who runs coaching centres of IIT on the pattern of Super 30 under the banner of Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership, told The Telegraph: “Parents should not force their wards to plan their careers. The students should be allowed to decide what is good for them and what course they want to pursue as the students are the best judges for their talent.”

He said: “Similarly, the coaching centres also play an important role in brushing up the talent of students and a good teacher will always come to know which student is interested in what and act accordingly. Teachers can also give moral support to their students when they fail to achieve their target in one go.”

Another speaker, Ashok Kumar Gupta, additional director-general-cum-managing director of Bihar Police Building Co-operation gave tips for becoming successful individuals and also felicitated the team of IITians for Youth for their social initiative.

Thousands of aspiring students from classes IX and XII from around 50 schools, including DAV, St Michael’s, St Xavier’s, Loyola, KVS and many others, attended the workshop. The experts briefed the students about various career avenues like law, engineering, medical, fashion, defence, mass communication and many others.

“The main agenda of this workshop called ‘Endeavour’ is free career counselling and interactive seminar of FAQs. The students will come to know about the various career options that they can delve into,” Pravin Kaushal, the co-founder of IITians for Youth, said.