Three More Tibetan Schools Shut Down in Golog as China Tightens Its Grip on Tibetan-Language Education
By Central Tibetan Administration
October 19, 2026
An orphan school, a girls’ school and a village school are the latest to be closed in a widening campaign against privately run Tibetan schools
Dharamshala, 17 October 2026: Chinese authorities have closed at least three privately run Tibetan schools in Golog (Chinese: Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture within a few weeks, according to information relayed through reliable sources in the region. The closures have deprived hundreds of Tibetan children of the Tibetan-medium education their own communities built for them, deepening fears that one of the last independent channels for teaching Tibetan language and culture is being systematically dismantled.
The sources said the government is closing private schools across Tibetan areas to accelerate national assimilation, moving Tibetan children into state-run institutions where they can more easily be subjected to political “re-education.” Heavy surveillance of phone and internet communications makes information from the region extremely difficult to obtain.
Orphan school caring for more than 300 children closed
On 2 September 2026, the authorities closed the Golog Tadrak Orphan School in Tabo Village, Machen (Chinese: Maqin) County. Founded in 2005 with funding from the late Dr. Tawu Lobsang Palden and his wife, who lived in Germany, the school gave both a home and an education to more than 300 children who had lost both parents and came from broken families.
Prominent girls’ school shut down
A week earlier, on 27 August 2026, the authorities shut down the Ra-Gya Jigme Gyaltsen Grassland Girls’ School, also known as Gangjong Tsathang Girls’ School, founded by Ra-Gya Jigme Gyaltsen on 15 October 2005. The only school of its kind in the area and one of the best known in Golog, it offered education and vocational training to girls from nomadic herding communities across Ü-Tsang, Kham and Amdo, teaching Buddhist philosophy, science, the Tibetan language, traditional medicine, handicrafts, thangka painting and astrology. The school won numerous awards, and many of its graduates are now respected figures in Tibetan society.
It is the second closure to hit the same community in two years. In 2024, the authorities shut down the Ra-Gya Gangjong Sherig Norbu Lobling School, widely regarded as one of the finest schools in all of Tibet.
Village school closed for teaching in Tibetan
The Jasak village school under Ra-Gya Town in Machen County was closed at the end of August after local authorities ruled that it could no longer teach in Tibetan. Officials reportedly told the school to teach in the “national common language,” meaning Mandarin Chinese in simplified characters, a policy Beijing presents as fostering unity among China’s 56 officially recognised ethnic groups. The school was ordered to close, and its students were sent to nearby government-run boarding schools. The villagers had founded the school themselves and kept it running through crowdfunding, as a local effort to keep the Tibetan language alive for the next generation.
Part of a wider pattern
The latest closures follow a series of shutdowns in Golog. After Sengdruk Taktse School was closed in July 2021, the authorities ordered seven more private schools in Darlag, Machen, Gade and Chikdril counties to shut down. On 24 June 2026, the Hungkar Dorje Vocational High School, which had taught Tibetan language and culture since 2008, was forced to close permanently.
Violation of rights and forced assimilation
The closures are a serious violation of the Tibetan people’s rights to education, language and cultural identity. By shutting community-built schools and pushing their pupils into Mandarin-medium state boarding schools, Beijing is expanding a system that UN human rights experts warned in 2023 already affected around one million Tibetan children, and which they described as a policy of “forced assimilation.”
These actions breach treaties China has ratified. The Convention on the Rights of the Child protects minority children’s right to their own language and to education that respects their cultural identity (Articles 29 and 30) and requires continuity in the cultural and linguistic upbringing of children who have lost their families (Article 20), an obligation broken by the closure of the Tadrak orphan school. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights protects the freedom to establish and choose schools (Article 13), while the conventions on discrimination against women and on racial discrimination guarantee girls’ equal education and prohibit discrimination in education and cultural life. The closures also defy Article 4 of China’s Constitution, which guarantees every nationality the freedom to use and develop its own language, and Article 37 of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law, which requires schools serving minority students to teach in their languages where conditions permit.
The PRC government claims that boarding schools and Mandarin instruction raise standards in remote areas, with state media citing teacher shortages and weak rural schooling to explain why Golog students board in Xining, more than 300 miles (about 480 km) from home. The closure of respected, community-run schools contradicts that claim. Children cut off from their mother tongue lose the ability to speak with their parents and grandparents and to inherit Tibet’s literary, religious and medical traditions, and a distinct identity is hollowed out from within.
– Report filed by the UN, EU, and the Human Rights Desk, Tibet Advocacy Section, DIIR
