Does physical education actually help children learn better? The evidence Indian schools are ignoring
CBSE has made an hour of physical activity compulsory in every school in the country. UDISE+, WHO survey data and two decades of cognitive science research show why most classrooms still treat it as time stolen from real learning.
Dr Kavitha Subramaniam | Child development researcher specialising in physical activity and cognition
Nearly three in four Indian boys aged 11 to 17 don’t get the one hour of daily physical activity the World Health Organization recommends, according to a 2019 WHO-led study in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health that pooled data from 1.6 million students across 146 countries. India’s figure for boys, 72 percent insufficiently active in 2016, was actually among the lowest in the world, better than the global average of 78 percent. The same study found Indian girls even less likely to be counted as “insufficiently active,” but its authors were blunt about why: in India and Bangladesh, the lowest recorded inactivity levels for girls likely reflect domestic chores at home rather than sport or structured play. A child sweeping a courtyard scores the same, on paper, as one training on a field.
How does exercise actually change a learning brain?
The cognitive science on this is no longer new or contested. Charles Hillman at the University of Illinois and his colleagues have shown, using EEG measures of brain activity, that a single twenty-minute bout of treadmill walking improves attention and executive control in preadolescent children immediately afterward, with measurable gains on academic achievement tests taken the same day. In a separate study from the same research group, children enrolled in a structured after-school physical activity programme showed increases in working memory alongside gains in fitness and reductions in body fat. A 2016 systematic review led by Joseph Donnelly and Hillman, published as an official position stand in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, concluded that physical activity and fitness meaningfully influence children’s cognition, brain structure and academic achievement between the ages of 5 and 13. A widely cited US Institute of Medicine review of school-based physical activity research found that 11 of 14 correlational studies looking at physical activity during the school day showed a positive relationship with academic performance, and none showed a negative one, directly undercutting the assumption that time on the playground is time subtracted from test scores.
What does Indian policy already require?
None of this is unknown to Indian regulators. CBSE made Health and Physical Education compulsory for classes 9 to 12 starting the 2018-19 session and extended it to classes 1 to 8 the following year. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha in August 2023, the Ministry of Education confirmed that CBSE has directed every affiliated school to keep one HPE period a day for every class, from grade 1 through grade 12. The Board’s own affiliation bye-laws go further: schools must have a playground, sports facilities and a properly recruited physical education teacher at every level, verified through physical inspection before a school is even affiliated.
The National Education Policy 2020 pushed the same logic across the wider system, recommending sports-integrated teaching as a cross-curricular approach rather than a separate period, and introducing bag-less days, including a dedicated ten-day stretch sometime during grades 6 to 8, for enrichment activities that include sport. The Fit India Movement, launched by the Prime Minister on 29 August 2019 at Indira Gandhi Stadium, added school-level certification soon after, with criteria as concrete as a trained and physically active PE teacher, a playground hosting at least two outdoor games, one PE period a day, and 60 minutes of physical activity for every student. Participation in the movement’s flagship Fit India School Week grew from about 15,000 schools in its first edition in 2019 to more than 4.3 lakh schools by its second, held over December 2020 and January 2021.
Why does the requirement collapse in practice?
CBSE’s own affiliation rules require every school to have a playground and a trained PE teacher. UDISE+ 2023-24 found roughly one Indian school in five had no playground at all.
The gap shows up first in infrastructure. UDISE+ 2023-24 data put playground availability at 82 percent of India’s 1.47 million schools, or roughly 2.6 lakh schools nationwide with none, even though a playground is a stated precondition for CBSE affiliation specifically. It shows up again in how the compulsory period actually gets used. HPE assessment for classes 9 and 10 is graded on a five-point scale, A to E, and schools submit those grades to CBSE directly, but by the Board’s own design, none of it is added to a student’s final board exam marks. A subject can be compulsory on the timetable and structurally weightless at the same time, and schools under pressure to raise board results routinely treat it that way, converting the period into a free hour for remedial coaching or simply leaving it unsupervised.
A 2023 study in the Medical Journal of Dr D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth, examining insufficient physical activity among urban school-going adolescents, named the same three culprits repeatedly: lack of playground access, long hours of sedentary behaviour at home and school, and rising screen time. Indian research on the topic remains thin, a gap the study’s own authors flagged directly, even as national policy assumes the problem is already being addressed.
What does the evidence say about who loses out most?
Girls lose out twice over. WHO’s 2019 data shows them less likely than boys to meet activity recommendations almost everywhere in the world, and in India specifically, whatever activity does get recorded for them is disproportionately domestic labour rather than sport. Children in schools without playgrounds lose out structurally, since a PE period with no field to hold it on tends to quietly disappear from the timetable altogether rather than move indoors. And children preparing for board years, classes 10 and 12, lose out by design: the same years CBSE has flagged as most exam-intensive are the years HPE carries zero weight in the score that actually decides college admission.
What to do
Count minutes, not periods. Check whether the HPE period CBSE has mandated for every class, every day, is actually being used for physical activity, or whether it quietly becomes a study hall whenever an exam is close.
Run your school against the Fit India School Certification checklist this week: a trained and active PE teacher, a playground hosting two or more outdoor games, a daily PE period, and 60 minutes of activity for every student. Register on fitindia.gov.in if you meet the basic criteria; most eligible schools never do.
Check whether HPE grading for classes 9 and 10 is happening with the same seriousness as any other subject, given that it carries no board-exam weight and is therefore the first thing to get compressed when the timetable is under pressure.
Track girls’ participation separately from boys’, and separately again from domestic responsibilities at home, since national data suggests activity counts can look reassuring for girls for exactly the wrong reason.
Read the Institute of Medicine’s finding that 11 of 14 studies on school-day physical activity found a positive link to academic performance and none found a negative one, share it with any colleague who treats the PE period as time stolen from real learning, and check back in a month on whether that changed how the period actually gets used.
Sources: World Health Organization and The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, “Global trends in insufficient physical activity among adolescents” (Guthold et al., 2019) · UDISE+ 2023-24 Report, Ministry of Education, Government of India · Ministry of Education reply to the Lok Sabha, August 2023, on CBSE Health and Physical Education requirements · CBSE affiliation bye-laws and Health and Physical Education curriculum documents · National Education Policy 2020 · Fit India Movement and Fit India School Certification, Department of Sports, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports · Hillman, Pontifex, Raine, Castelli, Hall and Kramer, “The effect of acute treadmill walking on cognitive control and academic achievement in preadolescent children,” Neuroscience (2009) · Donnelly, Hillman, Castelli et al., “Physical Activity, Fitness, Cognitive Function, and Academic Achievement in Children: A Systematic Review,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (2016) · Institute of Medicine, “Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School” (2013) · Medical Journal of Dr D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth (2023), study on insufficient physical activity among urban school-going adolescents
