The question we started with

How does a fifteen-year-old in Tamil Nadu end up in the science stream?

Sixty-six out of a hundred students here take that path. About two choose arts. Almost nobody has written down how that decision actually gets made, so we went to find out.

Learning platformsask how is this student learning.

Assessmentsask what do the marks reveal.

Guidance programmesask where is this student headed.

Nobody asks what needs to happen next for this student: who is responsible, whether it happened, and whether it changed anything.

This is the reason the research exists.

Marks and scores
What someone noticed
What they did about it
Whether it happened
Whether it changed anything
Final outcome

Filled: already recorded · Hollow: nowhere to put it

We are building the first honest record of how this decision actually gets made inside Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools.

What we’re doing about it

Who decides. What information reaches the family, and when it arrives. What it costs when it arrives late.

Not a model. Not a survey. Fieldwork, school by school. We go and sit with principals, teachers, students and parents, and write down what is actually happening.

Then we test small ways of responding to what we find, with schools and communities willing to try them while they are still being shaped.

யாதும் ஊரே
யாவரும் கேளிர்

Yaadhum oore, yaavarum kelir

Every town is our own.
Every person, our kin.

Kaniyan Pungundranar · Purananuru 192 · Sangam era

What we believe

We took the line as a premise rather than a slogan. If no accident of birth decides what belongs to whom, then the district a student was born in should not quietly decide which stream is available to them.

That is a claim about the world that can be checked, school by school, and checking it is the work.

Every possibility belongs to every student.

The same claim, narrowed to one thing we can actually go and check.

A hundred students. Two chose arts.

This is the public picture, and it is the only part of this story already written down. Everything underneath it, how each of these students arrived where they did, is what we are in schools to find out.

Of every hundred Tamil Nadu students

66Enter sciencethe default path

2Choose artsthe two marigold figures

32Go elsewherecommerce, vocational, out

Nobody can tell you which of these places was chosen, and which was simply arrived at.

Our fieldwork so far · in progress · as of August 2026

00

Schools mapped

00

Interviews recorded

00

Districts entered

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Researchers in field

Two ways the same findings reach a student.

The research tells us how these decisions are really made. Both of the programmes below are small, free attempts to respond to what we find, tested with the people they are meant to help.

Yaadhum Schools Inside one school, one class at a time We shape a short pilot around the transition problem your school is already seeing, and share back everything we find. There is no fee. How a pilot works Yaadhum Foundation Beyond the schools that already say yes Community programmes with colleges and local partners, for students and families who may never meet Yaadhum through a school at all. About the Foundation

The same rooms, wearing someone else’s badge.

Long before Yaadhum, we were already mentoring students through three volunteer programmes. That work is what put us in front of the problem, and we are still doing it.

United Nations

Education volunteer

Supporting students in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities with career awareness, exposure to technology and consulting work, and industry readiness.

Ministry of Education

Vidyanjali mentor

Registered under the Government of India’s school volunteer programme, working with students on career awareness and the educational pathways open to them.

Naan Mudhalvan

Industry mentor, TNSkill

Volunteering with Tamil Nadu’s skills mission, giving college students a clear view of technology and consulting careers before they have to choose one.

These are the volunteer mentoring roles our own team holds. The organisations above are not affiliated with Project Yaadhum and do not endorse, certify or accredit this work.