50% school students are stressed, finds a survey

Chennai-based technology-driven platform,

Scooldudes.com

has introduced an array of solutions to de-stress the school going children and their parents. The survey conducted across eight major cities in India, covering about 5,000

school-going children

reveals that 50 per cent children in Chennai are stressed. The reasons cited being are heavy academic syllabus, long study hours that includes after school tuition as well, parental/teacher pressure and lack of confidence.

The

stress

levels of the Mumbai and Bengaluru children are higher at 80 per cent and 65 per cent respectively.

The major concern of parents is that their child is hooked to electronic devices such as, mobile, computer, iPad or tablet, and most of them play video games.

Ramachandran Kannan

, a HR professional turned academician and the founder of Scooldudes.com said, “These days, a stressful education system has negatively impacted children’s exuberance, spontaneity and creativity. It has deprived them of learning life, leadership and social skills. Today’s children direly need a mechanism that will relieve them after their school and free time. Filling this void, through Scooldudes.com, we are providing them a strong, after-school hangout, which will offer activities and programmes to nurture and develop social skills, emotional development and hone out academic talent among them.We are happy to expand our operations in other parts of India, where the school-going children badly need after-school engagement programmes to beat their stress levels.”

Started in 2013, as a fun-filled after-school hangout for the children between the age-group of 12 to 18 years, currently, Scooldudes has a presence in Chennai and other southern states. Recent entrant to Mumbai, Schooldudes will soon expand to other parts of India including Kolkata, New Delhi and tier I and tier II cities in the coming year.

With over 10,000 participants signed in through its interactive online internet and off-line engagement platform in the form of communities, for students, Scooldudes provides an opportunity to bond with their counterparts and gain experience that would help in developing their life skills through daily activities such as contests, and express and develop their creative, literary and thinking skills. The platform teaches life skills through various outdoor activities such as rappelling, camping, organic farming, cooking with firewood, bonfires, stargazing, archery, non-competitive games and so on.