Pangkongma School
Project details
Pangkongma School was one of the schools the Himalayan Trust built in Solukhumbu in 1970, in the village of Pangkongma, as Sir Edmund Hillary's school-building programme spread out from its original base at Khumjung. It is recorded in the Trust's own history as Pangkonija Basic School, its current name.
In 1994, Sir Ed flew over the school by helicopter during a Nepal visit, and the downdraught from the rotors blew the shingles clean off a nearby barn roof. He landed and paid the barn's owner forty dollars in compensation, which by the account of one of the party "apparently made him very happy". The school roof itself came through undamaged. Pangkonija Basic School operated for more than five decades before merging with the neighbouring Kharikhola School in 2026.