Annual exams for the academic year 2002-2003 were held from March 28 - April 2, 2003. The tests included oral tests of prayers and written tests for Tibetan, English, Nepali and Mathematics. The results were announced in a special ceremony on April 4th and prizes were awarded to the top three students in each area. The students who were studying in the upper level have all graduated and are now in the equivalent of the 5th grade. Out of 30 students, 13 study in the upper level and the rest in the lower level. The students in the lower level also passed and are now in the equivalent of the 4th grade.

The children had a short break and took a tour of a Japanese Temple nearby, and also spent time maintaining the garden, leveling the lawn and doing other needed work around the school.

The new session for the academic year 2003-2004 started on April 15th. The students in both upper and lower level have four subjects each. They study Tibetan, English, Nepali and Mathematics. The students take classes in these four subjects from quarter past ten in the morning to 3pm in the afternoon.

The students memorize prayers and practice rituals in the morning and evening. The Institute has a prayer instructor from Rajpur Sakya Centre (RSC), Dehradun, India, who teaches the prayers and ritual classes. The principal of the RSC kindly sent the instructor to Pema Ts'al to help the children.

Click here for a breakdown of a typical school day.

Pema Ts'al hosted a dental clinic for six days from 18th to 23rd April 2003 under the guidance of Dr. Tom Roberts, a dentist from Seattle, WA. According to the list at the school reception center, a toal of 260 patients from both the Institute and villagers from the nearby Tibetan Refugee Settlement, mostly under 18 years old, visited the clinic. The Institute is very grateful to Dr. Roberts and all his staff who were involved in the dental clinic. The Institute hopes to host the dental clinic again in the coming years.

2002 News

The Vikramasila Foundation is happy to announce that the children have left their rented space in Kathmandu and are now living in their new school and home in Pokhara, Nepal. Below is an email from Lama Kunga Dhundop, head of the Institute, on both the school and the children's activities.

All the students and teachers are healthy and doing well. The students recently had their annual examination for the academic year 2001 and 2002, which was held from 9th to 14th March. They were busy during exams and during its preparation, and now they are quite free and enjoying leisure time playing and undertaking other activities like learning musical instruments for their religious puja, etc. The students gave their examination paper on English and Tibetan. They have also given the oral test of prayer that they had learned for the period of one year. The result was very satisfactory.

We have now fourteen bedrooms and five big classrooms. The students are staying three in each bedroom. We are now building the prayer hall and library. The bigger part of these constructions was finished and now the remaining parts are being constructed. The construction of the chanting hall, guest room and one other room is going on above the 5 classrooms. The walls are nearly completed and probably from next week, the plaster work will begin.

From this academic session, we’re going to increase some more subjects. Venerable Acharya Guru Gyaltsen, the institute director will come here in May to discuss the subjects to be taught and auditing the record for the financial year 2001 & 2002. We’ve not Nepali and Math subjects now. Probably we will add these subjects after we meet.

The students started their new classes from Monday (25th March, 02). All the students had done pretty well on their three subjects except one, two students. Right now, the younger students are reading in class three and elders are in class four. Two students named Ngawang Dhakpa and Lecshey Tenpa from younger class were double promoted and now they are reading with their elder brothers.