Why the CBSE’s move towards competency-based assessment has a gap

A school principal told me, with genuine pride, that her school does experiential learning. They take students to the beach to clean it. I did not say what I was thinking, but I have not stopped thinking about it. This is not a criticism of that school or the principal. The intent was real. So was the effort. Community engagement has educational value but what was missing was something more specific: the understanding that experiential learning is not an activity. It is a pedagogy. It has structure, sequencing, reflection, and measurable learning outcomes built into its design. A beach visit without that architecture is a good morning out. Whether it qualifies as project-based learning depends entirely on what surrounds it, not on where the bus stops.