Overview
- Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke at the inauguration of a Daanish School in Islamabad on Sunday, October 18, 2026, and used the event to recommit the government to the programme.
- He said every child deserves equal access to quality education regardless of family wealth and warned Pakistan cannot fulfil Quaid‑e‑Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s vision without equal opportunity for all.
- Shehbaz cited alumni stories from Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit‑Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to show graduates becoming doctors, engineers, police officers, bureaucrats, sales managers and teachers.
- He urged officials to equip Daanish Schools with information‑technology and artificial‑intelligence laboratories and signalled institutional backing through a national endowment fund to broaden the programme’s reach.
- The Daanish network began in Punjab in 2010 as residential schools for talented underprivileged children, and the prime minister’s push could expand those boarding, scholarship and modern‑skills provisions to underserved regions of the country.