Education is the corner stone of any successful nation. At the heart of most thriving global economies lies a dynamic educational system which prepares their youth to compete with the best in the world. There is no doubt that prosperity of nations now depends solely on the intellectual quality of its human resource and investing in high quality education is synonymous with investing in the future of a nation. Unfortunately, this aspect in Pakistan has been ignored ever-since its independence. Quality education remains the prerogative of children drawn from a thin layer of upper crust of Pakistani Society. 70% of our people living in villages are totally deprived of any quality schooling and consequently can play little role in national policies and its development. This educational apartheid, with a tiny little elite perpetually dominating country’s social life, its polity and economy, is a sure recipe for social conflicts between the masses and the elite. The current social and sectarian tension and resort to fundamentalist tendencies by the youth, especially from remote and under-developed areas are manifestation of the impact of prevailing archaic system of education for vast majority of our youth in underprivileged areas. It was these harsh realities that motivated the Founders of Kashmir Education Foundation to make a beginning towards educating and grooming the brightest children from rural areas in the hope that these children will one day become role models for their communities by emerging as high class citizens who can demonstrate quality leadership in diverse fields.

The Foundation of Kashmir Education Foundation (KEF) was thus laid as a charitable education trust in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir in 1994 with its Head Office located at Rawalpindi. Its primary objective is to provide high quality modern education to bright children of underprivileged and marginalised sections of the society, particularly in the rural areas and to support the general up gradation of abysmally low teaching standards of country’s primary and secondary schools. KEF is paying special attention towards educating female students of underprivileged society’s untapped population of Azad Kashmir & Pakistan.

The Foundation of its pilot project “ Pearl Valley Public School & College-PVPS&C” was laid in a remote village Khirick, near Rawalakot in AJ&K in 1996. The Foundation was extremely fortunate to have volunteer educationist from Voluntary Service Overseas (UK) who laid the Foundation of PVPS on most modern lines. However, due to extremely poor educational standards in the area, there was an acute dearth of competent teachers. The Foundation arranged the training of initial batch of teachers with Ali Institute of Education but this proved to be a non-starter as most graduate teachers had extremely poor educational background and could not cope with the standard of training set for teachers from urban areas. The Trustees decided to set up own Institute of Teacher Education under the guidance of volunteer educationists with intimate guidance provided by University of Gloucestershire and educationist trustees of KEF UK. The ITE became a success story in not only ensuring quality teachers for our schools but in improving the educational standards in Rawalakot and later in other parts of Pakistan.