By: Emdi Iyer
India today stands at a decisive moment in its educational transformation. As the global landscape moves rapidly toward innovation-led, skill-based, and application-oriented learning, a significant portion of Indian schools still remains anchored in outdated teaching methods dominated by rote learning and exam-driven culture. This system produces students who may excel in theoretical examinations but struggle when required to apply knowledge in the real world—especially in fast-evolving domains like commerce, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. To bridge this gap, the urgent incorporation of experiential learning and a reform in pedagogy has become not just necessary, but unavoidable.
In this changing landscape, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) recently announced a bold step forward: redesigning the assessment structure so that 50 percent of board examination questions will now be competency-based. While this shift is a powerful policy move intended to encourage analytical thinking, problem solving, and real-world application, it also exposes a serious challenge—the infrastructure and preparedness required to support experiential learning in commerce and financial education remain severely inadequate in most Indian schools.
Students in commerce streams often learn the mechanics of markets, business strategies, and financial systems through textbooks rather than through practical exposure. Many schools offer science laboratories and digital STEM equipment, but very few have commerce labs, school-based enterprises, financial literacy simulation tools, stock market practice platforms, or entrepreneurship incubation spaces. Thus, while CBSE’s reform signals a progressive change in evaluation, the classroom experience remains unchanged for many students who continue to memorize concepts instead of applying them.
The scarcity of trained teachers further intensifies the problem. Most educators lack exposure to project-based learning, business simulations, start-up mentorship processes, or digital finance systems because they themselves were never trained in experiential pedagogy. Without significant investment in teacher training, curriculum redesign, and infrastructure development, shifting to competency-based exams risks widening inequality rather than fixing it. Students from resource-rich schools will adapt quickly, while those from ordinary schools may be set up to struggle.
At a time when India is witnessing rapid economic shifts, rising unemployment, and a booming start-up culture, strengthening experiential learning in commerce, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy is essential for four critical reasons:
1. Preparing Students for Real-World Application
Commerce education cannot stay confined to theory. Students must engage in live business projects, prepare budgets, participate in digital finance tools, conduct market research, and experience stock market simulations and enterprise management. Real-world exposure builds decision-making, creativity, and leadership—skills that CBSE’s competency-based assessment now demands.
2. Nurturing an Entrepreneurial Mindset
The future economy belongs to innovators. Entrepreneurship learning must move from theory to practice through innovation labs, idea pitching, school businesses, hackathons, and mentorships with industry professionals. Experiencing entrepreneurship is the only way to understand risk and innovation—not memorizing definitions.
3. Strengthening Financial Literacy for Life
In an economy shaped by digital payments, investment opportunities, and increasing financial fraud, financial education is a life skill. Students must learn saving, investing, taxation, credit management, insurance, and digital safety through practice—not through textbook definitions that leave them unprepared for adult responsibilities.
4. Reforming Pedagogy and Empowering Teachers
Experiential learning requires trained educators and strong support systems. CBSE’s shift demands redesigned classrooms, interdisciplinary projects, technology integration, and continuous teacher training. Without supporting teachers, competency-based exams cannot achieve their intended outcomes.
The Way Forward
For CBSE’s new assessment model to achieve genuine transformation, schools must move from information-based learning to competency-based performance, and from passive teaching to active experience. This means:
- Creating commerce and financial literacy labs, school enterprises, and stock practice platforms
- Establishing entrepreneurship cells, incubation programs, and industry collaborations
- Integrating internships, community business projects, and experiential assessments
- Investing heavily in teacher training, digital tools, and real-world curriculum design
If India wants to build a globally competitive economy, reform must begin with classrooms. Commerce builds understanding, entrepreneurship builds opportunity, and financial literacy builds economic resilience—but only experiential learning brings them alive. CBSE’s decision to shift half of board exam questions to competency-based formats is a welcome step, but without parallel investment in infrastructure, teacher training, and real-world learning tools, it risks becoming a policy without practice.
The future demands not just educated students, but empowered thinkers, innovators, and financially aware citizens.
The time to transform classrooms into laboratories of life is now.
India must move beyond marks to markets, beyond teaching to doing, and beyond theory to experience.
The classrooms of today must become laboratories of life—for a stronger, skilled, and self-reliant India tomorrow.
Only then will our education system truly prepare the leaders, creators, and changemakers of tomorrow.
