On most mornings, the first sound at Vidyakshetra is not the shrill ring of a bell. It is the soft notes of a flute.

Somewhere under the neem trees, a student practises a raag (melodic framework). A few steps away, another child tightens yarn onto a loom. Two boys sweep the entrance before heading to the open kitchen where breakfast simmers. In a corner of the courtyard, a girl folds her hands and recites a shloka (verse) from memory.

There are no uniforms here. No heavy bags weighing down shoulders. No rush from period to period. Yet learning flows in every corner of the campus.

This is Vidyakshetra, a small school on the outskirts of Bengaluru that has reimagined what education can feel like. Children knead dough before diving into mathematics. They debate Sanskrit grammar after weaving on handlooms. They experiment in the science lab one day and stitch cloth bags the next.

There are no tests or rankings that pit one child against another. Still, every student who has taken board exams has scored above 85 percent, with most achieving between 90 and 96 percent. More importantly, they leave school speaking of the cloth they dyed with flowers, the plays they performed, and the questions they carried back home.

At this gurukul-inspired space, education is not a commodity. It is a shared journey, rooted in Indian knowledge systems and guided by the joy of learning.

The idea for this Vidyakshetra space began with one man’s search for meaning. In 2006, Muneet Dhiman was working with Mindtree in Germany when a period of reflection made him question the path he was on. “It prompted me to rethink my purpose in life, and I discovered that education is where I want to spend the rest of my life,” he recalls.

He returned to India with his wife, Preethi, and together they stepped into classrooms as teachers. Between 2010 and 2016, the family visited more than 26 institutions across the country, learning from gurukulams, Sri Aurobindo schools, Krishnamurti Foundation schools, Montessori classrooms, Waldorf methods, and even conventional CBSE and IB boards. He often says he is deeply indebted to the learnings these journeys gave him.

Years of research and experimentation finally took shape in 2016, when the school opened with just 13 students. Today, it has grown to 157, with nearly a thousand applications arriving each year. The curriculum is built on the Samagr Vikas Method (holistic development across body, mind, and spirit) with the Panchakosha framework (a traditional Indian knowledge system) at its core. It also includes the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) curriculum, which students follow for their board exams.

There are no examinations within the school.

© The Better India