The global survey shows 83.4% of Indian boys aspire to be software developers while 91.2% girls want to be psychologists.

New Delhi: As many as 77 per cent of girl students in India aspire to become journalists or writers while 91.2 per cent want to be psychologists, a latest global survey finds.

In comparison, 83.4 per cent of boys aspire to be software developers, 8.8 per cent want to be psychologists and close to 22 per cent want to take up journalism as a profession, reveals the survey based on multiple-choice questions.

According to the results of the survey by Cambridge Assessment International Education, only 16.6 per cent of Indian girls aspired to become software developers.

Close to 23 per cent of the respondents — both boys and girls — want to be engineers or doctors.

Besides India, the survey was conducted in the US, China, Pakistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Indonesia and Argentina. Respondents were in the age-group of 5-19 years. Almost 20,000 teachers and students from around the world took part in the survey.

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.

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.