For decades, India has ranked near the top of the world in school enrollment numbers — and near the bottom in learning outcomes. Pratham's Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has documented year after year that a substantial share of upper-primary students cannot fluently read a Grade 2-level text or solve basic arithmetic problems from two grades below. Children are in school. They are not learning at the pace their years of enrollment would predict.
That gap is the reason activity based learning has shifted from a niche pedagogical experiment to the organizing principle of India's National Education Policy 2020. For CBSE coordinators, school principals, and K-12 teachers navigating that policy shift, this guide covers the essentials: what ABL is, where it came from in India, what the evidence actually says about its effectiveness, and how to implement it in a real classroom with real constraints.
What Is Activity-Based Learning (ABL)?
Activity-based learning is a teaching approach in which students build knowledge through direct experience rather than passive reception. Instead of a teacher explaining a concept while students copy notes, ABL puts the cognitive work in the student's hands: conducting an experiment, sorting cards, building a model, solving problems with physical objects, or presenting findings to peers.
The contrast with traditional "chalk and talk" instruction is deliberate. In rote-based classrooms, content moves in one direction — teacher to student — and success is measured by the ability to reproduce that content on a written exam. In an ABL classroom, the teacher becomes a task designer and observer, designing structured activities that require students to apply, analyze, and generate understanding for themselves.
Activity-based learning replaces passive note-taking with structured tasks that require students to do something with the content — experiment, build, discuss, or solve — so that understanding develops through experience rather than repetition.
The Evolution of ABL in India: From Rishi Valley to NEP 2020
India's engagement with activity based learning is not a recent import from Western ed-tech circles. It began with David Horsburgh (1916–1982), a British educationist who spent his career in South India and developed what he called "activity learning" at Neel Bagh School in Andhra Pradesh during the 1970s. Horsburgh's core insight was that children learn at different paces and benefit from self-directed, hands-on tasks more than uniform lecture. His methods were later systematized by the Rishi Valley Rural Education Centre (RIVER), which created a milestone-based card curriculum that became a reference point for ABL programs across India.
The approach gained national-scale attention when Tamil Nadu implemented a version of ABL across government primary schools in the early 2000s, eventually reaching millions of students. Teachers used cards, charts, and manipulatives organized by learning milestones. Evaluations of the Tamil Nadu program produced a pattern worth knowing: classroom engagement improved visibly, but translating that engagement into measurable gains in foundational literacy and numeracy scores proved harder to demonstrate at scale — an honest preview of the implementation challenges that persist today.
NEP 2020 has now placed ABL at the center of official education reform. The policy explicitly mandates a shift from rote memorization toward competency-based, experiential, and inquiry-based approaches from the foundational stage through secondary school.
— National Education Policy 2020, Government of India"The new pedagogical and curricular structure will move away from the emphasis on rote learning towards a focus on critical thinking and more holistic, inquiry-based, discovery-based, discussion-based, and analysis-based learning."
NCERT is redesigning its textbooks in alignment with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE 2023), embedding activities, projects, and investigations directly into the learning sequence. For CBSE schools, this means ABL is no longer an optional pedagogical preference — it is now a policy mandate.
Core Characteristics of an ABL Classroom
Knowing what ABL is in theory and recognizing it in practice are two different things. These are the markers that distinguish a genuine activity-based approach from a lesson that simply adds a group discussion at the end.
Student agency over pace and path
In a traditional classroom, the teacher controls the pace of instruction for the entire group. In ABL, students spend meaningful time working independently or in small groups at their own level. This is most visible in foundational-stage classrooms using milestone-based card systems: one child may be working on letter recognition while a classmate in the same room is already forming complete sentences.
The teacher as designer and observer
The ABL teacher's core job shifts from delivering 40-minute lectures to designing tasks, circulating among groups, asking probing questions, and observing individual progress. This is a substantially different professional skill set — which is precisely why teacher training is the most consistently cited obstacle to scaling ABL across Indian schools.
Purposeful physical materials
ABL requires things: cards, tiles, measuring tools, models, charts, specimens, building blocks. The material is not decoration; it is the instruction. A math lesson on fractions uses cut-paper fraction strips or fraction tiles. A science lesson on states of matter involves students observing and recording what happens to ice in different conditions.
Multimodal and collaborative
Students in ABL classrooms read, write, build, discuss, draw, and present. Activities are frequently designed for pairs or small groups, building collaboration skills alongside content knowledge — capacities that the NCF-SE 2023 explicitly lists as core competencies Indian education must develop.
Key Benefits for CBSE Students
The case for ABL in Indian schools draws on both global research and domestic classroom experience.
Stronger conceptual retention
Cognitive science research consistently shows that active processing during learning improves long-term retention compared to passive exposure. When a student physically builds a model of the water cycle rather than copying a diagram, the task demands more cognitive work — and that work is what makes knowledge durable. The "generation effect," documented by researchers including Robert Bjork at UCLA, shows that producing information is substantially more effective for memory than receiving it.
Bridging NCERT theory and real-world application
One of the most common frustrations in Indian classrooms is the gap between what students can reproduce on a board exam and what they can actually do with that knowledge. ABL directly addresses this. A Class 10 student who has conducted a titration experiment, not just copied the procedure into a notebook, understands what normality means in practice — and brings that understanding to competitive exam questions that require application, not recall.
Increased engagement and attendance
Teacher observation data from programs in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Rajasthan consistently report improved classroom engagement when activity-based approaches replace lecture. Students who are building, sorting, or experimenting are harder to disengage than students listening passively. Several district-level implementations have noted reductions in absenteeism alongside ABL introduction, though this evidence is observational rather than from controlled studies.
Engagement improvements from ABL are well-documented in Indian classroom settings. However, rigorous, large-scale evidence that ABL improves scores on standardized literacy and numeracy assessments in India remains limited. The Tamil Nadu experience and several district-level pilots show that implementation quality matters as much as the philosophy — poorly trained teachers using ABL materials produce worse outcomes than well-trained teachers using any approach.
Implementing ABL: Practical Examples for Science and Math
Here is what activity-based learning looks like in CBSE classrooms, subject by subject.
EVS and Environmental Science ( Grades 1–5)
Soil investigation: Students collect three soil samples from different areas of the school grounds, then observe texture, color, and water absorption by pouring a measured amount of water and timing drainage. Each group records results on a prepared observation sheet and compares findings across groups. This covers NCERT EVS soil concepts in one 45-minute period using materials that cost almost nothing.
Food chain card sort: Print cards with local animals and plants — pigeon, earthworm, neem tree, hawk, grass, crow. Groups arrange them into food chains and food webs, then explain their reasoning to the class. Peer explanation and in-the-moment correction from other groups deepens understanding in ways a fill-in-the-blank worksheet cannot.
Mathematics ( Grades 3–8)
Fraction tiles: Cut equal paper strips into halves, thirds, quarters, and eighths. Students physically compare ½ and ¾, discovering equivalence and ordering without abstract notation first. This directly addresses NCERT Mathematics Class 4–5 curriculum on fractions and visual representation — and builds the conceptual foundation that fraction algorithms require.
Geoboards for geometry: Students recreate triangles, quadrilaterals, and polygons on a pegboard and measure properties directly. Concepts like area and perimeter shift from formulas to observed relationships. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has consistently supported manipulative-based instruction for building conceptual understanding before procedural fluency.
Real data surveys: Students design a five-question survey for their classmates, collect responses, create frequency tables, and present bar graphs. This covers the Class 6 NCERT Data Handling chapter while also developing survey design skills and peer communication.
Working with large class sizes
Indian classrooms frequently hold 40–60 students. ABL does not require ideal small-group ratios. Activities can be structured so that groups of 6–8 work simultaneously with one set of materials, with the teacher rotating among groups every 8–10 minutes. The key design principle: every student has a specific role within the group — recorder, materials manager, presenter — so no one can coast invisibly.
Assessment and Grading in an Activity-Based Framework
The most common concern teachers raise about ABL is legitimate: if students are working in groups on open-ended tasks, how do you grade individual learning — and how does that connect to CBSE board expectations?
Observation checklists during activities
The activity itself is a window into understanding. As you circulate, use a simple three-column checklist: student name, observed behavior, follow-up needed. Note whether a student can explain what they're doing or only imitates a group member. Three seconds per student, sustained across a week, builds a clearer picture than any end-of-unit quiz.
Rubrics for products and presentations
When an activity produces something — a chart, a model, a group presentation — assess it with a rubric. A four-level rubric for a Grade 6 science model might assess: accuracy of scientific content, clarity of labeling, evidence of individual contribution (observed during the process), and ability to explain when questioned by the teacher. Distribute the rubric before the activity begins so students know exactly what they are working toward.
Portfolios as longitudinal evidence
Ask students to maintain a learning portfolio: a folder containing activity worksheets, observation records, sketches, and written reflections. The portfolio documents growth over time and supplements written exam scores in parent-teacher conferences. CBSE's existing framework for Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) at relevant grade levels explicitly accommodates this kind of documentation.
Connecting activities to written exams
ABL and board exam preparation are not in conflict. A student who genuinely understands a concept through activity can answer written questions about it — and often handles application-level questions that rote learners cannot. Make the bridge explicit: after every major activity, spend 10–15 minutes on "how would an exam ask this?" Show students how the hands-on experience maps onto the question formats they will encounter. That link should be visible, not assumed.
The Role of Technology: ABL in Hybrid and Flipped Classrooms
The COVID-19 school closures forced Indian schools to confront a question they had largely avoided: can active learning happen outside the physical classroom?
It can, with deliberate design. The flipped classroom model assigns conceptual delivery for home — a short instructional video, a brief reading, or a WhatsApp voice note for lower-connectivity contexts — and reserves the full classroom period for activity-based application. Students arrive having been introduced to the idea; class time is spent doing something with it.
Digital tools extend ABL into hybrid contexts as well. Collaborative virtual whiteboards support card-sort and diagram activities remotely. Science simulation tools — several available in Hindi and regional language interfaces — allow experiments to be approximated at home. Kahoot, Google Forms, and Mentimeter can turn formative check-ins into whole-class activities that give teachers real-time data on comprehension gaps.
If device access is limited, the most effective technology for activity-based learning is still printed materials. A set of laminated activity cards, a printed observation grid, and a pencil carry a complete ABL lesson. NCERT's new textbook designs include embedded activity sheets specifically so that teachers in under-resourced schools have a starting point without additional printing or procurement budgets.
The risk to watch: digital ABL that collapses into watching videos. That replicates passive reception in a new format and defeats the purpose. Technology in an ABL framework is a delivery mechanism for tasks — not a replacement for the tasks themselves.
What This Means for Your School
Activity based learning in the Indian context is not a solved problem neatly packaged for rollout. NEP 2020's mandate is clear, the pedagogical rationale is well-grounded, and decades of classroom experience in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Rishi Valley have established what ABL looks like when it works. The evidence on whether it reliably improves standardized assessment scores at scale in India is still being built — and honest adoption means holding both the promise and the uncertainty at the same time.
For CBSE coordinators and principals, four priorities matter most:
- Invest in teacher training first. ABL without trained teachers produces noise, not learning. Sustained in-school coaching — not a one-day orientation — is the minimum viable investment.
- Start with one subject and one grade. Identify a motivated teacher and a content-rich unit: fractions, states of matter, local ecology. Document what works before scaling across the school.
- Build assessment into the design from day one. If formative tools are added as an afterthought, teachers default to written tests and ABL becomes an add-on rather than a core practice.
- Use the NCF-SE 2023 and NCERT's revised textbooks as your curriculum anchor. Activity-based learning is now embedded in the official sequence. Build on that infrastructure rather than creating parallel materials from scratch.
The question that drives effective ABL is not "did I cover the chapter?" It is "what did students do with the content today?" That shift in question, asked consistently by teachers and supported structurally by school leaders, is where activity based learning moves from policy language to actual classroom change.
