Daanish Schools: From Education to Nation Building

Naveed Miraj

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a child who has given up on dreaming simply because their family cannot afford to turn those dreams into reality? Across the remote villages, mountains and deserts of Pakistan, countless talented children face this harsh reality. It is for these children, whose dreams are held back not by a lack of ability but by a lack of opportunity, that initiatives like Daanish Schools offer a new ray of hope for their bright future.

On October 18, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated Daanish School Islamabad, extending this vision to more children who might otherwise be denied access to quality education. Spread across thirty acres on Kurri Road, the school was completed ahead of schedule. Its modern classrooms, robotics facilities, IT and science laboratories, e-library and art room offer students access to resources that many children from low-income families can only dream of. Over 7,000 applications were received, and 360 students from across Pakistan were selected entirely on merit. The strong response from Balochistan, the tribal districts and Gilgit-Baltistan reflects the hopes of families who have long struggled to find quality educational opportunities for their children.

The idea behind Daanish Schools is not new. It began in 2010, when Shehbaz Sharif was Chief Minister of Punjab who thought at that time why the children of wealthy families could study at institutions such as Aitchison while the talented children of labourers, farmers and orphans were denied comparable opportunities simply because their parents could not afford them.  Instead of allowing the idea to remain a matter of discussion, he turned it into a practical initiative. The first schools were established in Rahim Yar Khan, Hasilpur, and Chishtian. From there, the programme expanded to Dera Ghazi Khan, Mianwali, Attock and Rajanpur, eventually reaching ten cities across Punjab. Today, twenty Daanish Schools, along with Centres of Excellence, are helping children build futures that might otherwise have remained beyond their reach.

The ambition has now grown beyond Punjab, with twenty-seven new Daanish Schools being constructed across different regions , including Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A Daanish School is not an ordinary educational institution. It is a place where the state holds the hand of a child like a mother. Here, no father has to spend sleepless nights worrying about school fees, and no mother has to sell her jewellery to pay for uniform and books. Education, accommodation, meals, books, uniforms, medical care, career counselling, and sports all are provided there. There is no room for favouritism, only merit matters. From the call to the Fajr prayer at dawn until the final hours of study at night, every moment is devoted to hard work, discipline and the building of dreams. Artificial intelligence is taught from Grade Six, while nationally recognised coaches teach students on the sports fields how to win and how to rise again after defeat.

The performance of those studying in these schools is extraordinary. The top three positions in Punjab in the Grade Eight examinations went to the girls of Daanish School. Students of these schools also secured the first and second positions in the Lahore Board's matriculation examinations. Eighty-four percent of the students went on to universities, and 3,460 graduates are now serving the very nation that once extended a helping hand to them, after becoming doctors, engineers and government officers.

The importance of this Daanish Schools becomes more clearer when one considers the experiences of the children who have benefited from it. Zahid, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, continued attending a school even when doing so placed a heavy burden on him. During school holidays, when other children were free to play, he collected scrap from rubbish dumps to help meet the cost of his education. At an age when he should have been thinking about books, friends, and the future, he was carrying a sack of waste on his shoulders. His dream of studying, however, never disappeared. Daanish School gave him an opportunity to leave that work behind and focus on his education.

The story of Dr Aleena offers another perspective on what educational support can mean for a family. His father was a hardworking tailor. All day long, he stitched clothes for others, and at night, he wove dreams for his daughter. Then, one day, he passed away, and it seemed that all the dreams he had so lovingly stitched together might unravel as well. But Daanish School carefully secured every stitch of those dreams. Today, that same daughter has become a doctor after graduating from King Edward Medical University. Her journey from the sound of a sewing machine to the rhythm of a stethoscope is the reward for a father's hard work, a reward he could not live to witness himself, but one that the entire nation can now see.

Naeem Asghar's experience carries a similar message. His father was martyred in 2002 while defending Pakistan, leaving behind a sick wife and children facing an uncertain future. Naeem wanted to become a doctor so that he could care for his mother, but the family had limited means. Naeem still recalls that without Daanish School, he would probably have been working as a labourer somewhere.  For him , the opportunity was much more than education. It brought him closer to a dream that had once seemed difficult to achieve.  Naeem credits his commitment to serving suffering humanity and his deep sense of compassion, as the gifts of Daanish School. When his mother thanked the Prime Minister at the inauguration ceremony, it was the gratitude of a martyr's widow who had lived to see that the state had not abandoned her son.

Irfanullah, from Balochistan, was only five years old when he lost his father. Years later, when he travelled to Dera Ghazi Khan to study at Daanish School, he was apprehensive about how people in Punjab would treat him. He was entering an unfamiliar environment, far from home, carrying the uncertainty that any child might feel in such circumstances. What he found, however, was kindness and acceptance. His experience helped him understand that being Punjabi, Baloch or Pashtun does not diminish the fact that all are Pakistani. Today, Irfanullah is described as the first civil service officer to have graduated from Daanish School. Irfanullah arrived in Punjab carrying a bundle of fears, but left with the flag of Pakistan in his heart. At Daanish School, hatred lost and Pakistan won. Today, nearly 1,100 children from other provinces live under one roof in Punjab's Daanish Schools, eat at the same table and dream of one Pakistan.

The experiences of Aiman Ali from Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Insaa Akbar from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa add further depth to this picture. Aiman represents the aspirations of a young student from Kashmir who sees her future as part of the wider story of Pakistan. Insaa, meanwhile,  faced challenges related to disability as well as her family's limited financial resources. Her father values education and  worked hard to support his daughter, but providing her with the opportunities she needed was not easy. Meeting the Prime Minister at the inauguration ceremony was a proud moment for both of them. Insaa's determination is a reminder that disability should not become a reason to dismiss a person's ambitions or underestimate their abilities.

Anyone who witnessed the inauguration ceremony that day could not hold back their tears. As children from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Kashmir spoke from their hearts in front of the Prime Minister, silence fell across the hall and eyes filled with tears.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that he was present not merely in his capacity as Prime Minister, but as a servant of the people. He explained that a lack of financial resources was the greatest obstacle standing in the way of millions of talented children, and that the purpose of Daanish Schools was not simply to match Aitchison but to provide an education even better than it. He reminded the audience that millions of people had crossed rivers of blood for Pakistan, and that until every child whether an orphan or the son or daughter of a labourer receives equal opportunities for education and healthcare, Pakistan could not become the country envisioned by Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

He directed that IT and artificial intelligence laboratories be established in Daanish Schools. One hundred acres of land have already been allocated in Islamabad for Daanish University, ensuring that a child from a poor family is never left alone on the journey from school to university.

Daanish School is not charity,  it is an investment in Pakistan's future. When a child who once collected rubbish picks up a book, when a tailor's daughter becomes a doctor, when a martyr's son becomes a healer and when an orphan from Balochistan becomes a government officer, it is not just one life that changes,  the destiny of an entire generation is transformed.

Daanish School offers children from underprivileged families the hope to dream and the inspiration to achieve their goals through hard work. It offers a glimpse of a Pakistan, where it is potential not circumstances, that determines a child’s future.

The dream Shehbaz Sharif envisioned sixteen years ago as Chief Minister is now being transformed into a reality for the whole of Pakistan under his leadership as Prime Minister. At night, the lights of Daanish School are switched off, but the dreams of these children continue to illuminate the future of the entire country.

This is the journey from education to nation-building.