Phortse School

Sir Edmund Hillary's Himalayan Trust built a school in Phortse village in 1967. Phortse had missed out four years earlier, when Sir Ed's 1963 school-building expedition reached Pangboche and Thame but ran out of funds before it could also build in Phortse, a neighbouring village he had a soft spot for because so many of its men climbed on Makalu.

In the meantime, Phortse's children boarded at a hostel Sir Ed set up in a rented house in Pangboche, until their own village finally got a school four years later. Phortse's school later became one of eleven pilot schools in the Trust's literacy improvement programme in the late 2010s, with one dedicated teacher, before merging into Khumjung Secondary School in 2024.