Students in India's budget private schools speak for under 5 minutes per 40-minute lesson

Bangalore, Karnataka: In its groundbreaking 2025 report on in-classroom teacher behaviour in budget private schools in India, Noldenbirge Foundation has unveiled a stark portrait of classroom life in India's budget private schools. Drawing on a second-by-second analysis of video-recorded lessons, researchers applied their newly developed Taxonomy of In-classroom Teacher Behaviours to quantify exactly how time is spent within the four walls of a lesson. The study found that teachers talk to the whole class for 82.72% of lesson time, leaving students an average of only 4 minutes and 33 seconds per 40-minute lesson to think or speak for themselves. You can download the full report here: https://www.noldenbirge.org/research

The report reveals that, of the 72 behaviours in the Taxonomy, teachers demonstrated just 40 in-classroom teacher behaviours. Within those, only nine behaviours directly encourage student thinking or talking, amounting to a mere 11.38% of lesson time. In contrast, teacher-centered activities such as lecturing (52.06%), questioning the whole class (9.75%), and board work (7.97%) dominate the typical lesson. This imbalance highlights a widening gap between the collaborative, experiential learning championed by NEP 2020 and the reality in budget private classrooms.

"The limited opportunity for students to think or talk during a lesson diminishes critical thinking and ownership of learning," said Rosama Francis, Co-founder of Noldenbirge Foundation. "By pinpointing when and how each in-classroom teacher behaviour occurs in a 40-minute lesson, our Taxonomy gives school leaders and instructional coaches a precise tool to redesign lessons that foster student voice and agency."

As India marks five years since the adoption of NEP 2020, the findings sound a clarion call for teacher professional development. Noldenbirge Foundation plans to open-source its Taxonomy, inviting educators and policymakers to collaborate on transforming lesson design. With only a sliver of time devoted to student talk, this report urges stakeholders to reimagine classroom dynamics, and grant learners the space to think, question, and converse.

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The Noldenbirge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization specializing in applied education research. We draw insights from this research to design adult learning experiences. Our mission is to bridge the gap between education policy and its everyday practice. We work closely with parents, teachers, and school principals to field-test educational theories at the grassroots level, helping transform policy into practical school improvement, teaching, and parenting strategies nationwide.

This release was published on openPR.