Lhuentse Higher Secondary School (HSS) has been recognised as one the top ten performing schools, in class ten and twelve levels in 2019, according to the annual rankings of schools recently released by the education monitoring division. The school has been featuring in the top ten lists since 2017.
Lhuentse HSS, located a few miles away from Lhuentse town, currently has 465 students studying in the school, of which 219 are boys and 246 are girls.
According to the school principal, Dorji Nidup, there is no magic formula to achieve such recognitions consecutively for three years. “There are quite a number of factors which contributed to the success of the school. It is the trust and confidence among ourselves, between the colleagues and between students and teachers, and believing in ourselves.”
The principal also added that the school provides flexible study timings to interested students that have helped the school in achieving good academic results. “Besides three structured study time in the morning, evening and night, we also allow students to get up early and at the same time provide additional silent mode of study time after night study to those who want to continue their studies.”
Because of its good academic performance, the school receives a lot of enrolment requests from students from different schools across the country. However, the school management currently gives priority to only students of Lhuentse Dzongkhag. To meet the increasing enrolment demand, the school plans to increase the enrolment in classes seven and nine from next year.
“Because of the limited capacity, we are not able to take those students from other dzongkhags aspiring to study here,” said the principal. “But in the 12th five-year- plan, we are focusing on three pillars of development that’s making the school bigger, best and beautiful. So with this we will be able to cater those interested to pursue studies in our school,” said the principal.
The Ministry of Education awarded certificate and cash reward to the school last month as recognition for being in the list of top ten performing schools. The annual school performance assessment is based on academic learning scorecards, quality enabling practices and Gross National Happiness.
Sonam Tshering