India is set to roll out a national-level system for tracking school bus movements using RFID as part of its drive to enhance the safety and security of children during their daily commute to and from school. Two independent reports show strong alignment in the government’s proposal, which will combine RFID with GPS, GSM and Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems to deliver real-time visibility of student boarding events and bus location.
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is working on developing a standard model for this scheme on behalf of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, which will serve as the baseline for intelligent transportation systems for school buses across the country.
Under the plan, each student will be issued an RFID tag (or be linked to one) and every school bus will be equipped with corresponding RFID readers, along with GPS and communications modules. When a child boards or disembarks, the system will register the event, log it against the bus and route, and send notifications to parents and school authorities.
This development emerges against the backdrop of earlier experimental systems deployed by some schools and fleet operators. These earlier systems demonstrated how RFID tags could track student entry and exit on vehicles, and how integrated data could enable alerts for unusual events or delays.
For parents and school administrators, the benefits of such a tracking system are clear. Real-time visibility of when a child boards a bus and arrives at school, combined with live bus location updates, can considerably reduce anxiety and raise confidence in transport safety. For school operators, the system affords route optimisation, attendance logging and incident alerts. Industry analysts note that when combined with route-planning software it can also reduce fleet costs and improve scheduling efficiency.
However, the rollout will face significant challenges. Among the key issues flagged are data privacy and security concerns. Experts emphasise that as student location data and boarding records are highly sensitive, the system must comply with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and relevant IT regulations.
Cost and infrastructure complexity also pose hurdles, especially in the vast number of schools operating in remote or less-digitised regions. Ensuring reliable communications, maintaining RFID readers and tags, and driving school-bus operator compliance will all be essential to success. The standard being developed by BIS is expected to include guidelines on architecture, tag-reader reliability and minimum hardware standards.
If successfully implemented, India’s RFID-based school-bus tracking framework could serve as a model for safer transport for children in other large nations. The ability to automatically log student boarding and alighting events, combine that with vehicle location and route data, and feed it into dashboards accessible by schools and parents marks a step change in how school transport is managed. The coming months will be critical as the BIS model evolves, pilot projects are initiated and the scheme transitions from concept to operational reality.