Khumjung High School
Project details
Sir Edmund Hillary's original 1961 school at Khumjung, the very first the Himalayan Trust built, was upgraded to a full high school in 1982, with new classrooms added in 1984.
The high school's reach grew over the following decades. Today, as Khumjung Secondary School, it teaches pupils from Khumjung itself and from Pangboche, Phortse, Thame and Namche, some boarding in a Trust-supported hostel. Its neighbours Pangboche and Phortse, which had their own Trust-built primary schools, later closed and formally merged into Khumjung's, in 2025 and 2024 respectively. In 2024 a Khumjung Secondary School student topped the entire Solukhumbu district in Nepal's national school-leaving exams.
When Khumjung's original primary school was upgraded to a full high school in 1982, with new classrooms added in 1984, Khumjung began offering the years of schooling its neighbours did not. Neighbouring villages had their own Trust-built primary schools: Pangboche from 1963, Phortse from 1967. Once local pupils outgrew those, Khumjung was where they went next.
Today the school, now Khumjung Secondary School, teaches roughly 270 students from ECD to Grade 10, drawing pupils from Khumjung itself and from Pangboche, Phortse, Thame and Namche, some boarding in a Trust-supported hostel. Both Pangboche's and Phortse's own primary schools eventually closed and formally merged into Khumjung's, Phortse's in 2024 and Pangboche's in 2025, ending an arrangement that had sent their children elsewhere to be schooled since the 1960s.
The high school's reach shows in its results. In 2024, Khumjung Secondary School student Khamsu Ongdu Sherpa topped the entire Solukhumbu district in Nepal's national school-leaving exams, and the school has since been chosen as one of the Trust's Centre of Excellence schools under its current education programme, QEPS III.