Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, Oct. 17: The Prairie Talent Girls’ School, also known as the Grassland Girls’ School or Snowland Grassland Girls’ School, was permanently closed on August 27, 2026, according to a post shared by the Sino-Tibet dialogue platform, Lhasa Spring, on X (formerly Twitter), ending an educational institution established to provide modern and traditional education to girls from nomadic communities in Golog, eastern Tibet.
The school, founded by renowned Tibetan monk and educator Venerable Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen, was located near the sacred Ragya Mountain in Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in the traditional Tibetan region of Amdo, Qinghai.
Ven. Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen established the Prairie Talent Girls’ School in 2005 to address the limited educational opportunities available to girls from pastoral communities, whose daily lives were often occupied by household responsibilities.
The Trace Foundation, which supported Jigme Gyaltsen’s educational initiatives, identifies the Prairie Talent Girls’ School as one of two institutions he founded, alongside the Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational School, established in 1994. The foundation records the girls’ school’s founding in 2005 and documents Jigme Gyaltsen’s belief that educating girls also meant educating future mothers and laying a foundation for humanity.
Initially, the school enrolled 40 girls annually from across Tibet. Within six years, the number of students reportedly reached 240. In 2010, its first batch of students graduated, with graduates achieving top rankings in primary school examinations across the Golog region, earning recognition for the institution’s academic achievements.
Over the years, the school became a centre for learning Tibetan language and culture alongside modern subjects. Its curriculum included Buddhism, science, Tibetan medicine, traditional Tibetan arts and crafts, thangka painting and computer studies.
Students from all three traditional Tibetan regions—U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo—studied at the institution, which gained a reputation for combining modern education with the preservation of Tibetan cultural heritage.
October 15 would have marked the school’s 21st founding anniversary. Instead, former students took to social media to express their grief, share photographs of the institution and recall their years at a school that had educated generations of Tibetan girls.
The school’s closure comes amid concerns over the future of independent Tibetan educational institutions in the region. According to a post by Lhasa Spring, the school was subsequently taken over by the authorities and renamed Ragya Town Girls’ Middle School under a “privately run, publicly funded” arrangement.
Footage circulating online reportedly showed students covering their faces and sobbing, while textbooks and teaching materials lay scattered inside the school. Former students and alumni have also shared memories of their school years and their warm interactions with the principal, expressing sadness at the loss of an institution that shaped their education and personal development.
The closure of the Prairie Talent Girls’ School follows the shutdown of another prominent educational institution founded by Ven. Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen. The closure of the award-winning Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational School in Golog occurred on July 12, 2024, after nearly three decades of operation. The school had specialised in Tibetan language and culture alongside modern subjects, including computer science, engineering and medicine.
The closure occurred amid a broader campaign against private Tibetan schools and raised concerns about the erosion of Tibetan linguistic and cultural heritage under education policies increasingly favouring Chinese-medium instruction. The organisation also documented emotional scenes from the school’s final assembly, where students cried as they bid farewell to their teachers.
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