What Our First Year of Running a School Taught Us
We opened in August 2024 with more conviction than experience. A honest look back at year one on Kamalabad Road — the mistakes, the surprises, and the mornings that made it worth it.
In August 2024 we unlocked the gate on Street 14 for the first time as a school. We had fresh paint, a carefully prepared Montessori room, a national-syllabus plan for the primary classes, and — let's be honest — no idea how much we didn't know.
Two years in, admission season brings new families who ask us, reasonably: you're a new school, why should we trust you? This post is part of our answer. Not the marketing version. The actual version.
Mistake one: we underestimated the mothers
We prepared for questions about syllabus and fees. What we weren't ready for was how precisely mothers evaluate a school. One asked to see where the children wash hands before lunch. Another quietly checked whether the water cooler was actually cold. A third came back three times at different hours — we later understood she was checking whether the teachers' behaviour changed when the principal wasn't watching.
They were right to do all of this. We now design the school for that level of scrutiny, because that's the level our children deserve.
Mistake two: the timetable was written for adults
Our first timetable looked beautiful on paper. Forty-minute periods, neat subject blocks. Within two weeks it was obvious that a four-year-old's attention doesn't respect our stationery. The Montessori room fixed itself — that method already knows children work in cycles, not periods. But we rewrote the primary timetable twice in the first term. Shorter bursts, movement between subjects, the hard subjects in the morning when minds are fresh.
The lesson: when the plan and the children disagree, the children are right.
The surprise: evening was as important as morning
We started the Evening Academy almost as an afterthought — the building was sitting empty after 2 PM. It became one of the most important things we do. Children came from schools all over the area: bright kids drowning in classes of forty-plus, who just needed someone to sit with them for an hour and untangle the maths.
Some of them improved so much that their day-school teachers asked the parents what changed. We'll admit that felt good.
What a hard winter taught us
January was rough. Gas pressure vanished, as it does everywhere in Rawalpindi. We bought heaters, moved the youngest class to the sunniest room, and shortened the morning assembly so children weren't standing in the cold being lectured about punctuality. Small things. But we learned that a school's quality shows most on its worst-weather days, not on the annual function stage.
What we still can't do
We can't offer a big playing field — we have a courtyard, and we use every inch of it, but it is what it is. We don't have a bus service yet; parents manage pick and drop themselves. We go up to Class 6, so families who want one school from playgroup to matric will outgrow us. When parents ask, we say all this before they ask.
Why we're telling you this
Because every school's website says "excellence" and "nurturing environment", and we've noticed parents trust specifics more than adjectives. Our specifics: small classes, teachers we pay on time and keep, a Montessori start, a national-syllabus primary section, and an evening academy that's earned its reputation one maths notebook at a time.
If that sounds like your kind of school, come see year three in progress. The gate's the blue one on Street 14. The chowkidar will ask you your name — we like it that way.