Finding a suitable site for the School
was the first challenge faced by the Trust. The earthquake
left many areas in the mountainous valley in a
geologically unstable condition, with faults and fissures
even visible to the naked eye on numerous mountain sides.
A priority was therefore to find a site that would be as
safe as possible from landslides and also in the case of
future earthquakes. A second prerogative was for the site
to be located in an area that would be conveniently
accessible to as many villages and their residents as possible. Finding a
piece of land that satisfied both of these considerations
proved to be a considerable challenge, and it took the
Trust as long as a year to identify such a plot in Kawai,
a village situated approximately 22 km north of Balakot on
the main Kaghan road.
In January 2007, KMT acquired 50 Kanals
(6.25 Acres) of this identified land from its local owners on
a 99 year lease for the Main Campus of the School.
Additional land for a second campus has been earmarked in
the vicinity of Kawai. This will be acquired by the end
of 2009.
Planning work on the project started
immediately following the acquisition of the land.
Activities included conducting topographical and
geological surveys of the land and mapping it, developing
architectural plans for the School, and identifying and
recruiting contractors to construct the buildings and to
develop related infrastructure.
The design that was developed for the Kaghan Memorial
School as a result of these activities envisages the
division of the institution into three distinct
sub-schools, divided into two campuses:
The Main Campus
The Main Campus of the Kaghan Memorial School houses the
Junior School and the Senior School for Girls. Several
facilities such as the library, cafeterias, teacher
residences and grounds on this campus are shared by both
schools. Other structures such as classrooms, staff
rooms, laboratories and special activity rooms are
exclusive to each school.
Brief descriptions of both the schools are provided
as follows:
The Junior School
The Junior School consists of six class levels ranging
from Kindergarten to Grade Five. Each level comprises
of two co-educational classrooms with a capacity of
30 children per class. The School therefore has a
maximum capacity of 360 children, half of whom will be
girls and the other half boys.
The Junior School’s two academic
buildings each contain six classrooms, a staff room, a
computer room and a special activity room.
The Senior School for Girls
The plans for this School provide for eight
single-section classes for girls ranging from Grade
Six to A-Levels (Grade Thirteen). Each of the eight
classrooms can accommodate 30 girls,
translating to a total capacity of 240 girls for the
School. These classrooms are all housed in one
academic building.
This School also has three science
laboratories, one each for Physics, Chemistry and
Biology, a computer room, an arts room and a staff
room.
The Library and Administration Block
is the central building on campus. This two-level
structure has administrative offices on the lower level
and the School’s main library on the upper level.
Teacher residences consist of two
bedroom cottages with attached bathrooms and a shared
living room. Each cottage houses two teachers and all
teachers share communal kitchen and dining facilities, a
gym and a common room.
The Senior Boys Campus
This campus, also located in the vicinity of the village
Kawai, will house the Senior School for Boys. This
School will provide boarding facilities to its students,
and it is envisaged that all children enrolled in it
will be full time boarders.
As in the Senior School for Girls,
this School will have eight single-section classes
covering Grade Six to A-Levels (Grade Thirteen),
providing a total capacity of 240 children. The campus
will also house administrative offices, science
laboratories, computer rooms, teacher residences,
boarding facilities for the students, and infrastructure for sporting activities.
The boarding facilities in this
School will consist of four residential buildings, each
accommodating 60 children. Each building will contain
six dormitories, common activity rooms, a dining hall
and kitchen and other required boarding amenities.
Principal architectural and structural
drawings for the Main Campus were completed in the summer
of 2007. Minor modifications or additions may be
introduced as and when needed as the project progresses.
Plans for the Senior School for Boys will be developed
by the end of 2009 as construction work on that campus is
scheduled to begin in 2010.
Imperative 3: Construction
and Commissioning
Construction work on the Junior School
and other allied buildings on the Main Campus started in
March, 2007. This work is scheduled to be completed by the
end of 2010. However, the first of this School’s two
academic blocks will be ready for start of classes in
March 2009.
Contingent upon the success of KMT’s
fundraising efforts, the Trust also plans to complete
construction work on the buildings housing the Senior
School for Girls by the end of 2011. The target is
therefore to complete construction of the Main Campus by
year-end 2011. In the event that fundraising is slower
than targeted, the Senior School for Girls will be
completed in 2012.
Work on the Senior School for Boys will
commence in 2010 and shall be completed by the end of
2012.
Both the Senior Schools will be
furnished and equipped in 2013 to prepare them for their
first classes that are scheduled to begin in the spring of
2014.
Upon completion of all construction
work, the Kaghan Memorial School will be able to
accommodate a total of 840 students, spread over two
campuses, three sub-schools, fourteen grades (Kindergarten
to A-Levels) and twenty eight classrooms.
Imperative
4: Operations - Running the School
Teachers and Staff
The management and running of the
School are the responsibility of a dedicated staff of
administrators and teachers recruited specifically for
this purpose by KMT.
To ensure that the quality of education
offered at the school is on a par with the best private
schools in the country, KMT is committed to bringing in
teachers from from abroad and also from the major cities of Pakistan to teach at its School. These teachers are
recruited primarily on a volunteer basis. The Trustees of
KMT have committed to this project as volunteers, and they
feel that the best guarantee for attracting good teachers
to a remote rural area in Pakistan lies in the
identification and recruitment of teachers who share a
similar interest in volunteering their services to the
cause of spreading education amongst underprivileged
children. The Trust provides room and board facilities to
its volunteer teachers, supplemented by a monthly stipend
to meet incidental expenses.
The volunteer teachers are supported by
local teaching assistants, who are hired on prevailing
local salary scales. Similarly, non-teaching staff at the
School are also employed on a full time and salaried basis
by KMT.
Curriculum
The Kaghan Memorial School will provide education based on
the British model to its senior students, leading
eventually to A-Level certification from a recognised
educational testing authority in the United Kingdom. To
start with, however, a special curriculum has been
designed for the Junior School keeping in mind the social
realities of the targeted region and its children. While
deliberating on the syllabus, the curriculum development
task team understood that given the extremely impoverished
socio-economic background of the School’s children and
their consequent lack of exposure to even the most basic
concepts that may be taken for granted elsewhere, a
specially customised teaching model would be needed for at
least the initial couple of years to gradually, gently and
effectively orient these children with the modern
education that the School would be offering to them. This
model would transition into a more conventional teaching
programme in the higher classes.
The first version of such this tailor-made
curriculum and teaching framework has been prepared, and
the teaching team will evolve and improve this model
through practical classroom experiences over the first few
years until a truly pragmatic and efficient system is
finally developed for the children of Kaghan.
Special Programmes
In addition to education, the School will also endeavour to
address other pressing requirements of its children. In
particular, the Trustees of KMT realise that the
nutritional intake of the children in the Kaghan Valley is
well below desired levels, and that this directly hampers
their mental and physical development. To address this
very real and critical issue, the School will serve two nutritionally sound
meals to its children on every school day. Other
programmes aimed at helping the children and their
families may be introduced by the Trust over the years,
depending upon the need for such interventions and the
resources available to KMT in the future.
Imperative 5: Fundraising
Last but not least, fundraising is a
vital priority for the Trust on which all other activities
depend. Finances for building and running the School are
being raised by KMT through an extensive fundraising
programme that is being strengthened, diversified and
institutionalised over time.
By and large, the main focus of KMT’s
fundraising efforts is on soliciting contributions from
institutions and individuals, and on the organisation of
various fundraising events. Details on donation options
are provided in the “Support our Activities” section
on this website. As part of its self-help
efforts, KMT organises a range of fundraising activities
each year to generate finances for the School. These
activities have included but are not limited to: sporting
events, musical events, charity dinners and community
fundraising drives organised in collaboration with various
schools and colleges.
Most notably amongst its fundraising
initiatives, KMT has organised a series of several
international cycle races in Pakistan, including the Tour
of the Karakurrams and the Tour of The Himalayas
International Mountainbike Races, and the Tour of
Islamabad International Road Cycle Race. These races are
arranged by KMT on an annual basis, and they feature as
many as forty to fifty international cyclists from ten to
twelve countries in addition to local Pakistani teams. The
cyclists that have participated in past races have
included several World Champions and National Champions of
their respective countries in various cycling events.
These world-class athletes come all the way to Pakistan
every year, without any expectation of prize money, just
to help KMT raise money for its School. Several of them
have developed deeper affiliations with the Trust and they
act as its ambassadors in their home countries.
With support from the Lahore Polo Club
who helped organise an extremely successful charity polo
match for the Trust in March 2008, polo matches and
tournaments are also set to become a standard feature of
KMT’s annual fundraising programme.
An updated calendar of the Trust’s scheduled fundraising
events is available on this website.
