PM Shehbaz inaugurates Daanish School in Islamabad, stresses equal academic opportunities

On Sunday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated a Daanish School in Islamabad, emphasizing its mission to offer top-tier education to talented students from underprivileged families, thereby providing them with equal opportunities as those afforded to children from affluent backgrounds. Daanish schools, originally launched by the Punjab government, aim to provide quality education to marginalized and gifted students, and are touted as the largest network of boarding schools for both girls and boys in the nation.

During the inauguration ceremony in Islamabad, the prime minister recounted the stories of Daanish School graduates, such as a girl from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who overcame hardships and a woman from Bahawalpur who became a doctor after losing her father during childhood. "Ladies and gentlemen, this was a vision we had seen in Punjab when I was its servant.

How come the sons of rich people enter the iron steel gates of Aitchison College; sons of prime ministers, governors, bureaucrats, judges, civil servants, military servants, landlords, mill owners, regardless of their acumen and their level of intelligence," PM Shehbaz remarked.

The premier revealed that this vision prompted his team to establish Danish Schools back in 2010, with the aim of matching the quality and level of Aitchison College and other grammar schools across Punjab and other parts of Pakistan, and even surpassing them. "Every child deserves equal opportunities, whether they are the son or daughter of the richest man in Pakistan, the prime minister, or anyone from the elite class, or a child who has lost both parents," PM Shehbaz stated.

He lamented that if children like the daughter from Bahawalpur, the girl from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the boy before him, who also became a doctor, were left to waste their time in the streets, it would not be the Pakistan envisioned by Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The Prime Minister's Office announced that the school's foundation was laid in the federal capital in 2024, with 10 acres of land provided by the Capital Development Authority. In March, thousands of students nationwide applied for the school, which received over 7,000 applications for just 210 seats. Earlier this year, the school's board of governors approved a budget of Rs3.8 billion for 2026-27.