Tata’s Skool Bus: An Engineering Excellence

We at Tata Motors strive to make a difference. When it comes to school buses, innovation is our key driving force, with better technologies and pioneering designs, ensuring that every child is safe and comfortable through their school bus journey.

Tata buses are an example of manufacturing marvels. With large production facilities for buses and coaches in Pune, Lucknow, Goa, Jamshedpur and Dharwad, we have the biggest production capacity in India today. Our plants bear the hallmark of process excellence and are constantly upgraded with the latest technologies in bus manufacturing in order to maintain very high standards of product quality.

At Tata Motors, we have developed breakthrough technology in building bus bodies in collaboration with our partners — Tata Marcopolo Motors Limited and Automobile Corporation of Goa Limited (ACGL).

Each Tata school bus is aesthetically designed and equipped with special ‘child safety’ features that provide comfort, convenience and protection to the children travelling in it. Also, Tata Motors is the first company to get all the bus body code certifications for its complete range of 13-56 seater buses — Tata Starbus Skool, Tata Starbus Ultra Skool and Tata Cityride Ex Skool, hence offering every student a safe journey.

SkoolMan is another engineering masterpiece designed and developed in house by Tata Motors — an exclusive school bus telematics system. It is equipped with all the basic functionalities of a telematics system that can be used by parents, schools and fleet owners to track the location of the bus.

Apart from technology and safety related features, Tata Motors is also working with all stakeholders involved in school bus travel (students, parents, school bus attendants), to sensitise them towards accident prevention and tackling emergency situations through various school bus safety programmes. Building on the activity, Tata Motors recently conducted ‘Hamare Bus

Ki Baat Hai’ (also called Good

Citizen campaign) in schools across the country. HAMARE BUS KI BAAT HAI ‘Hamare Bus Ki Baat Hai’ began in 2013 with interactive sessions designed with the objective of sensitising school bus staff on the safety of children during school bus travel. As part of the initiative, Tata Motors has trained over 58,000 school bus staff in 162 cities, at over 1,250 schools, through 1160+ sessions and still counting. The interactive training programme involves role-plays, audio visuals and group activities, to enable each one of them to share their respective experiences, to sensitise and discuss the importance of their respective duties with the trainer and among themselves. The training programme also includes various sessions to help the school bus staff act in case of an emergency, maintaining personal hygiene and how to better interact with parents and their kids, while on the job.