Nasr School in Hyderabad is a part of the Nasr Education Society and is affiliated to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination. Begum Anees Khan, a member of the royal family of Surat, is its founder. She started the school in 1965 with an aim to promote quality all-round education for children.
The school, which had just 12 students and three staff members in its founding year, has grown rapidly over the past 48 years to its current strength of over 4,000 students and around 500 staff members in three different premises spread over 250,000 square feet of campus area.
The flagship school at Khairtabad area of Hyderabad is a girls’ school. In near five decades of the school’s history, it has played host to many distinguished visitors like Princess Esra Jah in 1974 and British novelist Barbara Cartland in 1978. In 1980, the year in which the first batch of six girls appeared for the ICSE examinations, students went to receive Queen Elizabeth II at the airport. The school has also played host to Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw in 1988 and author Ruskin Bond in 2003 among others. In 1983, students went on an inspirational field trip to meet Mother Teresa.
According to Nawab Mir Khutub Uddin Khan, secretary of the Nasr Education Society, “Our aim is to give individual attention to the students by providing a wide perspective of the world they live in and develop a broad international outlook.” This is reflected in the all-round development of students which takes place at the school. Nasr was the only school from the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to perform at the inauguration ceremony of the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi. At an individual level, Afrah Saleem, in 2007, represented India in Brazil to present the Indian Children Charter of Human Responsibilities. Saba Fatima, another Nasr student, came 4th in the All India Shooting Championship in 2011 and won the bronze in the 2013 girl’s air pistol event.
Nasr works closely with parents to imbibe in its students an appreciation for religion, culture and values and tries to build a strong character. The school became the first in the state to initiate various international exchange programmes. In 2005, it tied up with Raffles Secondary School in Singapore and in 2009 with Shimoshi Junior High School in Miyoshi, Japan for student exchange. It also fostered a relationship with different schools in Dusseldorf and Hamburg, Germany. Groups of students from Nasr have also been visiting NASA since 2012 as a part of the Real Time Rocket Science Study Programme.
Notable alumni of the school includes Sania Mirza, the Indian tennis ace; Dia Mirza, actor, model and former Miss Asia Pacific International; Pinky Reddy, former chairperson of the Hyderabad Chapter of FICCI Ladies Organisation; and Tejdeep Kaur Menon, Senior IPS officer, among many others.
