India has been a major seat of learning for centuries, if not millennia. Its current state presents a much varied picture. The country is facing several challenges: girls education, child labour and reservations policies, while still striving to reach 100% literacy. Government schools are much of the time short of funds, resources and the necessary infrastructure while private institutions are unaffordable for people living below the poverty line. These private schools largely focus on academic achievement and student's individual learning issues are rarely considered in the process. It is in this context that this study was conducted, looking at factors such as working memory and some learning styles that might be related to learning and performance of high school students in India. In all, 662 high school students participated in the present study. Working memory was measured using the digit span test and the results were interpreted by gender, age, school type and achievement categories. The relationship between working memory and student's performance in the examinations was also studied. Simultaneously, students' individual learning styles were evaluated using a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 28 items that reflected different learning modalities viz., visual, auditory and kinaesthetic, as perceived by the students. The learning style question items were analysed individually. An attempt was also made to discuss the variations in responses to different question items by gender, age, school types and achievement category. Statistical methods such as ANOVA, 't' test, chi-square and factor analysis were employed for interpreting data. The students working memory capacities ranged between 3 and 10 while the majority (75%) of the student's working memory capacities was found to be between 4 and 6.5. Girls had a slightly higher working memory than boys although the difference is not statistically significant. Girls showed a better performance in the examinations. Correlation analysis suggested a direct, positive and significant (p<0.001) relationship between working memory and student's performance in the examinations. Performance in the different school subjects was found to be highly correlated. ANOVA suggested a significant (p<0.005) difference in working memory between schools. The selection procedures followed by each school might have accounted for these variations. School 3 performed better than the other schools and, incidentally, the school recorded higher mean values of working memory suggesting the possible role of working memory. Students were grouped by achievement category. High achievers were found to have a mean working memory of 6.3, whereas average achievers and low achievers had 6.0 and 5.4 respectively. Results indicated that the difference between average and low achievers is small in the mean scores of all subjects. Perhaps if instruction is modified to reduce working memory load, low achievers could improve performance. The learning style questionnaire was structured while incorporating several learning situations covering auditory, visual and kinesthetic modes. Analysis of responses showed that students were found to show preferences for all learning situations. Their preferences appeared to be more contextual depending on experience rather than being specific to a particular modality. The chi-square statistic was used to evaluate the significant differences of responses in different categories. It was noteworthy to find that the differences between the students in different groups seem to appear on the modalities which they rarely experience at school (e.g. the kinesthetic and visual). Gender differences were apparent in those questions relating to visual preferences. Girls were found to respond more positively to this modality. Significant differences between age groups suggested that students in the present study appear to become more visual as they grow with the age. Variations in responses by school were more prominent than those of age, gender and the achievement category, indicating the extent of variance in exposure of students to resources, teaching styles and strategies that were practiced in respective schools during teaching and learning. The study offers an exploratory overview of the situation in a range of schools in India. Care must be taken in generalising from the data. The study has highlighted several problems and a few suggestions for further work have also been made.