What is the difference between CBSE’s DIKSHA virtual labs and a school VR lab?

On 13 August 2026 CBSE's Training Unit issued Circular TRG-16/2026 asking every affiliated school to disseminate the 845+ curriculum-aligned virtual labs and digital resources hosted on DIKSHA. Since then, principals and lab coordinators have been asking us the same question: if the government is giving us virtual labs for free, do we still need a VR lab? It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that the two serve different jobs in the same science programme. This post sets out what each one is, where they overlap, and how a CBSE or state-board school should timetable them together.

What exactly are the 845+ DIKSHA virtual labs?

The repository was developed by the Ministry of Education and MeitY through CIET-NCERT and first went live on DIKSHA on 29 July 2022, following the recommendation in paragraph 24.4 of NEP 2020 that existing platforms such as DIKSHA be used to create virtual labs. Each lab is mapped to NCERT curricula, learning outcomes, classes, subjects and chapters, and the content leans heavily towards Science and Mathematics from the upper-primary classes onwards.

A "virtual lab" here is a screen-based resource: an interactive simulation in which a student changes a variable and watches the result, an animation or short video of a procedure, and a self-assessment at the end. Students reach them five ways, all of which the circular lists: the DIKSHA portal and mobile app, the QR codes printed at the start of NCERT textbook chapters, grade-wise QR codes, the AI-powered Ask DIKSHA search, and DIKSHA's Personalised Adaptive Learning courses. There is no fee and no separate licence; a DIKSHA account is enough. CIET-NCERT also ran a five-day online orientation for teachers from 24 August to 1 September 2026, with the certificate course open on DIKSHA until 31 March 2027.

What does a school VR lab do that a browser simulation cannot?

A VR lab puts the student inside the phenomenon rather than in front of it. The learner stands in the solar system, walks through a plant cell, looks up at a Harappan granary, or handles a chemical reaction that a school would never run live. Three things follow from that which a 2D simulation on a phone cannot reproduce.

1. Scale and spatial memory. Distance, size and three-dimensional structure are experienced bodily, which is why topics like planetary orbits, anatomy and crystal lattices are the first ones teachers map to VR.
2. Safe practice of unsafe or impossible procedures. Fire, high-voltage circuits, dissection and field trips to places a bus cannot reach are run repeatedly with no consumables and no risk.
3. Group learning in one room. A VR period is a timetabled, supervised, whole-section activity with a pre-brief and a debrief, which is what NEP 2020 and CBSE mean by experiential learning. A DIKSHA lab is usually one student, one phone, at home.

The trade-off is equally clear. A VR lab costs money, occupies a room, needs charged headsets and Wi-Fi, and works only if teachers are trained to run a rotation. DIKSHA costs nothing and runs on the devices families already own, within the limits of their data and screen size.

DIKSHA virtual labs vs school VR lab: side-by-side comparison

Can either one replace physical practicals for CBSE board exams?

No, and schools should not plan as if they could. CBSE's Class 12 Physics, Chemistry and Biology papers carry 70 marks of theory and 30 marks of practical, and Class 10 Science carries 80 marks of theory with 20 marks of internal assessment, with the practical component assessed in the school laboratory. CIET-NCERT itself describes the virtual labs as a way to give every student access to practical, experiment-based learning, and the CBSE circular asks schools to encourage use of the resources; neither document suggests that a simulation substitutes for a bench experiment in the assessment scheme.

The useful framing is a three-layer practical stack. DIKSHA simulations come first, so that students arrive at the bench knowing what the apparatus does and what result to expect. The VR lab comes next for the topics where a physical lab cannot go, and for the whole-class experiential periods the timetable needs. The physical laboratory remains the place where board-assessed skills are learned and marked. The practical benefit of using all three is fewer wasted bench periods, because the familiarisation has already happened on a screen.

How should a CBSE school timetable DIKSHA and VR together?

A workable pattern for Classes 6 to 10 looks like this for each chapter that is mapped to VR:

1. Week 1, homework: the teacher shares the DIKSHA QR code for the chapter. Students complete the simulation and its self-check at home or in the computer lab; the teacher uses the results to see which concepts are shaky.
2. Week 2, VR period: a 40-minute period in the VR lab in a three-station rotation, with a 10-minute pre-brief drawn from the DIKSHA results and a worksheet for the students waiting their turn.
3. Week 3, physical lab: the bench experiment, now familiar, is run and recorded in the practical file.
4. Assessment: one item from the VR experience and one from the simulation appear in the next unit test, so both are seen by students as part of the course rather than a treat.

Six to eight VR-mapped chapters per subject per term is enough; the rest of the syllabus uses DIKSHA and the physical lab alone. For government and aided schools weighing the capital cost, our guide on how a government school pays for a VR lab covers Samagra Shiksha, CSR and PM SHRI routes.

What are Indian schools actually doing in 2026?

The two tracks are already running side by side in public institutions. On 31 July 2026 the New Delhi Municipal Council opened a "Viksit Bharat Anubhavshala" at Navyug School, Sarojini Nagar, with eight VR headsets and content covering more than 70 CBSE curricular and co-curricular topics for Classes 6 to 10, from virtual science experiments to tours of monuments and the solar system. Two weeks later CBSE's circular pushed every affiliated school towards the free DIKSHA repository. In Maharashtra, Abhigyaan, Qodequay's VR/XR immersive learning platform, is deployed in 1,350 Zilla Parishad schools reaching 1.5M+ students, with CBSE and state-board chapter mapping, a multilingual AI voice tutor inside each experience, and teacher dashboards that record which sections have completed which modules. None of these schools has stopped using the physical lab, and all of them point students to DIKSHA for revision.

If you are deciding whether a VR lab belongs in your school's science programme, or how to fit it around the DIKSHA resources you already have, book a 30-minute call with our education team and we will map the chapters, the timetable and the budget for your board and class sizes.