Quality Education Programme Solukhumbu II
Project details
Quality Education Programme Solukhumbu II ran from 2019 to 2025, delivered by Himalayan Trust Nepal with local governments and school communities, and co-funded by the Himalayan Trust and New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Over five years it trained more than 500 teachers and school leaders, supplied stationery to over 100 schools each year, refitted 159 classrooms and set up 44 computer labs, and awarded 171 Sir Edmund Hillary Memorial and bachelor-level scholarships.
Much of that ran through years that did not cooperate. COVID-19 closures held in-person teaching to under 60 percent of the school year for its first two years, so the programme kept children learning with self-study packs and small classes instead. In August 2024 a glacial lake outburst flood tore through Thame village and destroyed its school, and students and teachers relocated to Khumjung and finished the year there. The programme closed in 2025 with its scholarship commitments extended so every student partway through a qualification could finish it.
Quality Education Programme Solukhumbu II followed an earlier three-year phase that ran from 2016. Delivered by Himalayan Trust Nepal with the literacy partner Action for Nepal, alongside local governments, school management committees and the schools themselves, it aimed to do more than build classrooms: to train the teachers standing in front of them, supply the materials they taught with, and remove the costs that stopped students finishing school. Over five years it trained more than 500 teachers, head teachers and school committee members, supplied 108 schools with stationery each year, refitted 159 classrooms, and set up 44 computer labs with the Christchurch-based charity EduTech Nepal.
The programme's first two years ran through the pandemic. School closures held in-person teaching to as little as 41 percent of the academic year, and the programme adapted rather than paused, distributing self-study materials and teacher guidelines and running small-group classes so learning did not simply stop.
Its hardest test came in August 2024, when a glacial lake outburst flood tore through Thame village, destroying the school along with houses, a hostel, a health clinic and a hydropower plant. Forty-six students and ten teachers were relocated to Khumjung Secondary School and continued their lessons there for the rest of the year, a stopgap that only worked because Khumjung, itself rebuilt after the 2015 earthquake, had the space and staff to absorb them.
The programme also changed individual lives it could point to directly. Phura Tenzing Sherpa, from Khunde, studied at Khumjung Secondary School on a Sir Edmund Hillary Memorial Scholarship, attended the National Youth Leadership Conference in 2024, and won a cyber security training place from more than 8,000 applicants worldwide. When the programme formally closed in 2025, after a costed extension pushed its final year later than planned, its scholarship commitments were extended further still, to January 2028 for some students, so that nobody partway through a qualification would be left to finish it alone.