A parent in a CBSE WhatsApp group shares a screenshot: “CBSE now has 845+ virtual labs.” Within minutes, three more messages follow. Where exactly are these labs? What does a child actually do inside one? Is this replacing the science practicals at school?
Those questions are fair, and the circular itself does not answer most of them in detail. This guide fills that gap using CBSE’s actual notification, not just the headline version of it.
Quick answer: CBSE has told its affiliated schools about a repository of 845+ curriculum-aligned virtual labs and digital resources, mostly in science and mathematics, hosted on the government’s DIKSHA platform. They are free, mapped to NCERT chapters, and meant to supplement classroom and practical learning, not replace it.
Table of Contents
- What CBSE Actually Announced
- What the “845+” Number Actually Means
- What Is a Virtual Lab, Exactly?
- CBSE, NCERT, CIET, and DIKSHA: Who Does What
- How Students Can Access the Virtual Labs
- Which Classes and Subjects Are Covered
- Can a Virtual Lab Replace a Real School Lab?
- A Better Way to Use a Virtual Lab
- How Parents Can Help, Without Adding Screen-Time Homework
- Where the Initiative Still Falls Short
- The Final Verdict for Parents
- Frequently Asked Questions
What CBSE Actually Announced
On August 13, 2026, CBSE‘s Training Unit issued Circular No. TRG-16/2026 to every principal and school head affiliated with the Board. Its subject line is precise: dissemination of 845+ curriculum-aligned virtual labs and digital resources available on DIKSHA.
That word, dissemination, matters more than it looks. CBSE is not announcing a brand-new product launch. It is asking schools to make students, teachers, and parents aware of a repository that the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, working through CIET-NCERT, had already built and continued to expand.
The circular states that this repository contains more than 845 virtual labs, mostly related to science and mathematics, mapped to NCERT curricula, learning outcomes, classes, subjects, and chapters. It frames the initiative as support for the National Education Policy 2020, which specifically calls for platforms like DIKSHA to be used for virtual labs so every student gets access to hands-on, experiment-based learning, regardless of what equipment their school has.
Nothing in the circular claims these 845+ labs were all created recently. It claims they are now being actively publicized to schools that may not have known the scale of what already existed.
What the “845+” Number Actually Means
Here is where most coverage stops short. A repository of 845+ virtual labs does not mean 845 separate physical-style laboratories rebuilt online. CIET-NCERT’s own training material describes the repository as a mix of resource types, not one uniform kind of content.
Four categories typically sit inside it: interactive simulations that let a student change variables and see results, animations that visualize a process, short instructional videos, and self-assessment questions that check understanding after an activity. A single NCERT chapter might carry two or three of these together, not necessarily a single “lab.”
CIET-NCERT‘s own status updates give a sense of how much this repository has grown. An earlier internal report counted roughly 218 virtual lab activities across science, mathematics, English, and computer science. The current figure of 845+ shows real expansion, though CBSE has not published a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of exactly how that growth is distributed.
What we know: the repository exceeds 845 resources, is mostly Science and Mathematics, and is mapped to NCERT chapters. What we don’t know: the exact count of full interactive simulations versus videos or self-assessments, and a class-wise or subject-wise public catalogue.
What Is a Virtual Lab, Exactly?
Strip away the branding, and a genuine virtual lab is a simulation your child can act on, not just watch. CIET-NCERT’s own description is specific: simulations let a learner perform an experiment, choose different combinations of variables, and then think through why the outcome changed.
That distinguishes it from a video, which a child watches passively, or a PDF worksheet, which a child fills in after the fact. A video can explain why ice melts faster in salt water. A simulation lets a child change the salt concentration themselves and watch the melting rate shift in response.
What a Student Can Actually Do Inside One
Based on how CIET-NCERT describes the simulations, a student can typically observe a process, adjust one or more variables, repeat the same experiment with different inputs, compare results across attempts, and answer short self-check questions afterward. A Grade 7 student studying reflection of light, for instance, can change the angle of incidence in a simulation and watch the angle of reflection respond, something that is genuinely difficult to demonstrate with classroom mirrors and a room full of thirty children.
Not every one of the 845+ resources offers this level of interactivity. Some are explanatory videos or static animations. Parents reading “virtual lab” should picture a spectrum, from fully manipulable simulations at one end to short concept videos at the other, rather than one single format repeated 845 times.
CBSE, NCERT, CIET, and DIKSHA: Who Does What
Parents often use these four names interchangeably, and that blurs an important distinction.
| Body | Role in this initiative |
|---|---|
| CBSE | The school board. It did not build the labs. It issued the circular asking its affiliated schools to spread awareness of them. |
| NCERT | India’s national curriculum body. The virtual labs are mapped to its textbooks, chapters, and learning outcomes. |
| CIET-NCERT | The Central Institute of Educational Technology, a constituent unit of NCERT. This is the team that develops and maintains the virtual lab repository. |
| DIKSHA | The government’s digital learning platform, jointly steered by the Ministry of Education and MeitY. It hosts the virtual labs alongside thousands of other resources for every school board, not only CBSE. |
CBSE did not personally create these labs, and DIKSHA is not exclusively a CBSE platform. A CBSE-affiliated student happens to be one of many audiences this repository already serves.
How Students Can Access the Virtual Labs
CBSE’s circular lists five specific access routes, and none of them require a paid account.
| Access route | How it works |
|---|---|
| DIKSHA portal and app | Labs are organized by grade, subject, and chapter, so a student can browse straight to what they are studying that week. |
| QR codes in NCERT textbooks | Codes printed at the start of each chapter link directly to the matching virtual lab or resource. |
| Grade-wise QR codes | Separate codes give access to labs mapped across subjects and chapters for a specific grade. |
| Ask DIKSHA. | An AI-powered search feature inside DIKSHA that helps students and teachers find relevant labs by asking a question in plain language. |
| DIKSHA PAL | DIKSHA’s personalized adaptive learning courses, which also surface relevant virtual labs as part of a structured course path. |
The circular confirms there is no fee and no separate registration process specific to the virtual labs. A DIKSHA account, which most CBSE schools already encourage students to set up, is enough.
Which Classes and Subjects Are Covered
CBSE’s circular does not publish a grade-by-grade or subject-by-subject table of exactly which 845+ resources map to which classes. That level of detail sits inside the DIKSHA portal itself, searchable by grade and subject, rather than in the public notice.
What is confirmed is that the repository leans heavily toward science and mathematics for the middle and secondary years, with earlier CIET-NCERT reporting also showing smaller but real coverage in English and computer science. Parents of children in Grades 2 to 5 should expect a thinner spread, since most virtual lab development so far has targeted concepts that suit a simulation format, typically physics, chemistry, and biology topics from Grade 6 onward, along with select mathematics visualizations.
If your child’s exact chapter is not covered yet, that is not a sign the initiative has failed. It reflects a repository still being built out chapter by chapter rather than one that launched complete on day one.
Can a Virtual Lab Replace a Real School Lab?
This is the question every parent actually wants answered, and the honest answer is not a plain yes or no.
Virtual labs genuinely add value where physical labs fall short. A child can repeat a chemical reaction fifty times without wasting fifty sets of reagents. A student who missed a class due to illness can catch up on the exact experiment at home. A concept that is dangerous or impossible to demonstrate safely in a school lab, like watching a chemical reaction speed up at extreme temperatures, becomes safe to explore virtually.
Physical labs still offer something a screen cannot fully reproduce. Handling real glassware teaches a kind of care that no simulation enforces. Measurement error, spills, and a Bunsen burner that will not light on the first try—these frustrations are themselves part of what a lab teaches. Teamwork at a shared lab bench builds a different skill than solo screen time. And a simulation, by design, hides the messiness of the real world to keep the model manageable, which means it can quietly oversimplify.
| Strength | Virtual lab | Physical lab |
|---|---|---|
| Repeatability without cost | Strong | Limited |
| Safety for hazardous experiments | Strong | Requires strict supervision |
| Access regardless of school infrastructure | Strong | Depends on school resources |
| Tactile skill and equipment handling | Not possible | Strong |
| Teamwork at a shared bench | Limited | Strong |
| Real-world variability and error | Absent | Present |
The most useful way to think about this: a virtual lab is a rehearsal space, not a substitute stage. It works best before a physical experiment to help a child predict what should happen and after one to let them test a variable the classroom session did not have time for.
A Better Way to Use a Virtual Lab
Most children click through a simulation the same way they click through a game level, moving fast, chasing the end screen, learning very little on the way. A short sequence turns the same fifteen minutes into actual investigation.
Start with a question the child cannot yet answer. Ask them to predict what they think will happen before touching anything. Let them run the experiment inside the simulation. Have them observe closely rather than jump straight to the result screen. Ask them to record what they noticed, even in two lines. Get them to explain, in their own words, why it happened. Then push further: change exactly one variable and predict again before repeating the experiment.
That loop—question, predict, experiment, observe, record, explain, then change one variable and try again—is what separates consuming a simulation from investigating through one. It costs nothing extra and takes the same fifteen minutes most children would have spent clicking through anyway.
How Parents Can Help Without Adding Screen Time to Homework
The instinct to sit beside a child and explain every result defeats the purpose. A virtual lab works because the child discovers the outcome, not because a parent narrates it for them.
A more useful role is to ask questions after the session ends, not during it. What did you expect before you started? Which variable did you change, and what stayed the same? What surprised you? Do you think the same thing would happen with real equipment, or might something behave differently? Which part of the simulation felt too simple to be completely real?
These questions do more for understanding than checking whether every one of the 845+ labs got used. Completion is not the goal here. A child who genuinely investigates three simulations learns more than one who clicks through thirty without pausing.
Keep the session short, ideally tied to whatever chapter is active in school that week rather than treated as a separate digital-learning slot. That keeps it feeling like part of learning, not an additional homework category competing with existing screen time.
Where the Initiative Still Falls Short
A repository this size does not close every gap on its own. Devices and reliable internet remain uneven across Indian households, and a QR code is only useful if a family owns a smartphone and has data to spare. Teachers themselves need training to weave a fifteen-minute simulation into a forty-minute class period without it feeling bolted on, and CBSE’s circular does not detail how that training will reach every affiliated school.
There is also a real risk of passive use. A student who treats every simulation as a video to sit through gets little more than they would from a textbook diagram. And because a simulation is, by definition, a simplified model, younger learners in particular may walk away thinking a science concept is cleaner and more predictable than it actually is in a real laboratory.
None of this makes the repository less useful. It does mean the value depends heavily on how a school, a teacher, or a parent chooses to use it, not on the existence of the resource alone.
The India Context
Access to a fully equipped physical science lab still varies widely across Indian schools, shaped by location, funding, and infrastructure. A free, curriculum-mapped digital repository does not erase that gap, but it does give every CBSE-affiliated student, regardless of which city or town their school sits in, a way to see a titration reaction change color or a pendulum’s period respond to length, even on a day the school lab is unavailable.
That framing matters more than treating this as a story about which schools lack equipment. The goal, per NEP 2020’s own language, is equal access to quality practical learning experiences, not a replacement for building better school infrastructure.
Structured STEM programs outside school hours work on a similar principle, though they usually go one step further than a browser simulation. At Chitti Future School, children move through the same investigative arc—observe, simulate, build, test, and improve—but with physical robotics kits and real components in their hands, which is where digital concept learning and hands-on engineering practice genuinely complement each other rather than compete.
The Final Verdict for Parents
CBSE’s 845+ virtual labs are worth your child’s time, used the right way. They are free, mapped to what your child is already studying, and accessible through a phone or a QR code in a textbook your child already owns. None of that requires enrolling anywhere or spending anything.
What makes a virtual lab valuable is not that it happened to be built by CIET-NCERT and hosted on a government platform. It becomes valuable the moment a child stops clicking and starts asking why, changes a variable on purpose, and notices something they did not expect.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are CBSE’s 845+ virtual labs on DIKSHA? They are a repository of more than 845 curriculum-aligned digital learning resources, mostly science and mathematics simulations, animations, videos, and self-assessments, developed by the Ministry of Education and MeitY through CIET-NCERT and hosted on the DIKSHA platform.
Are the 845+ virtual labs newly created? CBSE’s circular describes this as a dissemination of an existing repository, not a new launch. The number reflects the current size of a collection that has expanded over several years, not resources built specifically for this announcement.
Are CBSE virtual labs free to use? Yes. The circular sets no fee and no separate registration process. Access is through the free DIKSHA portal, its mobile app, or QR codes printed in NCERT textbooks.
Which classes and subjects do the virtual labs cover? CBSE has not published a full grade-by-grade or subject-by-subject list. The repository leans heavily toward science and mathematics from grade 6 onward, with smaller coverage in English and computer science, searchable directly on the DIKSHA portal.
Can virtual labs replace real school science practicals? Not fully. Virtual labs are strong for repeatability, safety, and access, but physical labs still teach equipment handling, real measurement error, and teamwork that a simulation cannot reproduce. Most educators treat virtual labs as a supplement, not a substitute.
How can a student access the virtual labs? Through the DIKSHA portal or mobile app, QR codes at the start of NCERT textbook chapters, grade-wise QR codes, the AI-powered Ask DIKSHA search feature, or DIKSHA’s Personalized Adaptive Learning (PAL) courses.
What is the role of Ask DIKSHA in finding virtual labs? Ask DIKSHA is an AI-powered search feature inside the DIKSHA platform. Students and teachers can describe what they are looking for in plain language, and it helps surface the relevant virtual lab or digital resource, rather than requiring manual browsing by grade and chapter.
