Extra-curricular activities are a way of providing balance between school and other productive activities of a student. They may include sports, debating competitions, running a college newspaper, creating a student union etc. Just like other aspects of life, extracurricular activities have their advantages and disadvantages that are:

Benefits:

• Extracurricular activities help to foster confidence and positive self image in students.
• They promote physical activities thus keeping the kids healthy.
• They help foster certain personality skills in students like; they learn to be patient and tolerant, they develop empathy towards others and learn how to behave in communities.
• It is a good way to balance the kid’s time out of school.
• Provide a good base for students to get into good colleges and in some cases good jobs.
• Highlight the talents of students other than that related to academics.
• They foster a sense of responsibility among kids.
• They may increase the attendance of students in school.
• Motivate kids to learn more, to be more productive.
• Teach kids time management and problem solving skills.
• They allow kids to pursue their dreams.
• Kids good at these activities turn out to be very good professionals.

Limitations:

• They are costly. Some parents and schools cannot afford to provide resources for certain expensive activities.
• They add burden to the already building workload of students.
• Sports and gym activities leave kids tired thus they are less efficient in learning.
• It is always difficult to judge what amount of extracurricular activities is too much for kids.
• Sometimes kids tend to divert from their original goal and focus more on these activities.
• It can create time management issues, the kids might not be able to provide ample time to their families after school and extracurricular activities.
• Not all kids are good performers. It leaves a group of kids demotivated because they cannot perform as good in extracurricular activities as they can in school.
• It creates gaps among students as everyone wants to group with the famous kids. So this way, some of the kids are left out.

The ultimate challenge is to maintain a healthy balance between school and extracurricular activities. There is no other way to deal with this; too much of these activities and too little of these activities both can have a negative impact on students.