It’s mid-morning when we trundle up to the Panchayat Union Primary School at Anchetty village, 50 km from the industrial hub of Hosur in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu. Bright-eyed and with wide grins, a bunch of children are standing with their teachers waiting to greet us.
A child gives each visitor a welcome card, which reads “Welcome to the achievers’ campus,” before being led into the school, where over the next hour we see the leap in learning these children have made in the past few years.
In this remote school, where the first structure, a striking tiled-roof building, was inaugurated in 1961 by then Tamil Nadu chief minister K Kamaraj, children of various age groups, with the help of teachers, have spread out their work on different tables.
Over the next hour, we get a demonstration of the skills they have picked up in math, English, science, poetry recitation, computer skills, and art, while a dhoti- clad chubby lad in the role of a vegetable vendor displayed his money-handling skills. One of the visitors says he will give a thirty rupee note for some vegetables, but the boy is quick to retort: “There’s no thirty rupee note!”
Up to 25 per cent of learning improvement has occurred in primary and middle school students of Anchetty, one among the 532 schools in Krishnagiri that heavy vehicles major Ashok Leyland has supported as part of its corporate social responsibility programme ‘Road to School’, beginning 2015.
Anandhi, a farmworker who assists her husband in the fields in the nearby village of A.Pudhur, says she pulled her daughter, Priyadarshini S, out of a private, English-medium school where she was paying Rs. 18,000 a year, and enrolled her in the village’s panchayat school, also supported by ALL, after hearing rave reviews from other parents.
“Though initially I was hesitant, it turned out to be the best decision for my daughter. I really wanted to give her a good education. Now it’s coming at no cost. I haven’t studied beyond Class six. My daughter is a very bright student and eager to learn. I am happy she is getting this education,” says Anandhi.
Priyadarshini is not alone. Over 15,000 students have moved from local private schools to government schools after the RTS intervention.
Started with 36 schools in two clusters of 18 in Krishnagiri district, the RTS programme expanded rapidly to 2,196 schools covering 2,30,000-plus students spread over five States — Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir, UP and Assam. It also has an outreach in Alwar, Rajasthan, and Bhandara, Maharashtra. In TN, it is spread across the districts of Krishnagiri, Thiruvallur, and Namakkal. It recently extended the programme to 124 schools in Salem district, 150 schools in Dharmapuri district and 78 in Erode district.
NV Balachandar, Consultant, CSR & Corporate Affairs, Ashok Leyland, says before it rolled out the programme, there was a lot of debate if the company had to put its money into higher and primary education and decided it would have to be primary as it would have a long-term impact.
“We decided too that we would focus on government schools in remote locations where teacher shortage and learning levels were low, communities were under-resourced and where children were socially and physically not up to the State average. These were the criteria we established and formed the basis of our intervention,” explains Balachandar.
Partnering with a professional agency, Learning Links, the RTS programme supports government teachers with resource persons, works with the school principal to identify children below average levels and gives them remedial education to bring them up to the class average. “This was the primary remit,” he says. Later the company realised that nutrition, health and hygiene and lack of social awareness were a huge problem too.
“That opened up avenues where we felt we had to intervene. We also got into co-curricular activities, plus science and math kits which could make learning fun, and get kids excited at working with Learning Link’s resource persons. We took the children out of school, exposed them to markets, and police stations, and even took a bunch to ISRO, all to build their social consciousness and awareness,” he elaborates.
Through LLF and Leyland’s joint initiative, 1,115 rural youth have been trained to work as teachers in these remote schools, providing them full-time employment and deepening community engagement. This programme has given career opportunities to local youth as the resource persons for RTS are recruited mostly from the same village or neighbouring villages.
Next, we are on a bumpy, untarred road for over 15 km through a reserve forest, heading to a Panchayat Union Middle School in Belapatti, 95 km from Hosur. Again, a single teacher school, where Manjunath M doubles up as the headmaster, it has 69 children, mostly of daily wagers and agricultural workers. A gaggle of excited kids with pretty bouquets made from local flowers are ready to receive us.
We are ushered into a classroom where both parents and wards are eager to speak to us. A couple of boys who passed out of this middle school have gone on to the Ashok Leyland driver training institute for a two-year programme and are now ready to work in the automotive industry.
Most of the teachers stay on the school campus in one classroom cordoned off for their accommodation. A daily trek to these schools, especially during the rainy season, is practically impossible, they say.
Manjunath believes the high-quality early education Leyland is providing can change the arc of the village children’s lives, and for some, it already has. “In the past half-a-decade, a lot has changed. Children of Belapatti have never enrolled in colleges or pursued higher education even. Now, many are moving to nearby towns to enroll for their degrees,” he says.
Manjunath also highlights Leyland’s efforts in the early days to renovate the school to make it conducive for learning. “Our classrooms were extremely old with leaky ceilings. They changed all that. They built restrooms for girls and spent nearly ₹6.5 lakh on that. They built classrooms. They have installed RO water systems for clean, hygienic water,” he adds.
Community ownership
T Sasikumar, Head, CSR & Corporate Affairs, Ashok Leyland, says wherever the RTS programme has been rolled out, there has been a greater ownership by the community and that has had a great impact on the sustainability of the programme. Also, there has been a 25-30 per cent improvement in literacy and numeracy.
While the RTS intervention was only in the primary and middle schools in grades 1-8, there came the realisation that students in later grades needed handholding as well. In 2022, Leyland rolled out the Road to Livelihood programme, which Balachandar says scientifically assesses students with psychometric tests and gives them career guidance.
That apart, the RTL programme provides digital literacy, adolescent wellbeing and training in spoken and business English. “We teach them soft skills, prepare them for interviews, group discussions. The fourth pillar is advising them on health and hygiene, lifestyles, dealing with conflict and so on. This enhances their confidence levels and exposes them to a larger world,” explains Balachandar.
Last year, over 17,000 students were covered by this assessment. The gross enrollment ratio of these students in a college programme was 85 per cent compared to the national average of 29 per cent,” he says.
Over the past few years, Ashok Leyland and its subsidiaries’ spend on RTS has been going up: In the financial year 2021-22, it spent ₹15.32 crore; FY 22-23, ₹18.12 crore and in FY 23-24, ₹22.59 crore. This financial year 2024-25 will see a substantial increase as the programme scales up to new areas and covers more children; and the group expects to spend ₹40.44 crore on both the RTS and RTL programmes.
As the RTS programme rolls on, it’s going into more remote regions where intervention in education is needed: Kolli Hills in TN; Gulbarga in North Karnataka; Aligarh and Gorakhpur in UP (a programme kicked off by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as that is his constituency); Dibrugarh in Assam and rural Ranchi in Jharkhand. The Leyland learning bus motors on.
Shenu Agarwal, Managing Director of Ashok Leyland, sums it up: “Our focus is on enhancing educational access, continued retention of students in the educational system, and personal growth and development of the young minds. Looking ahead, we aim to impact one million students by 2030, continuing to drive meaningful change and creating a more equitable future for all. At Ashok Leyland, we firmly believe that education is the key foundation of a better tomorrow.”