(TibetanReview.net, Oct20’26) – Chinese authorities in one prefecture in Qinghai province have ordered the closure of at least three more privately-run Tibetan schools in the past three months under Beijing’s recently passed language laws, said Dharamshala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (tchrd.org) as well as the Central Tibetan Administration (Tibet.net) Oct 19. The schools – an orphanage, a charity-run nomadic grassland school for girls, and a community-funded village primary school – were forcibly shuttered after they refused to heed orders to switch to Chinese language and Sinicization-focused curricula.
The closure of the Golog Tadrag Orphans School, the Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen Grassland Girls School, and a community-funded village school in Jasag village – all in Golog (Chinese: Guoluo) prefecture – took place over Aug-Sept, 2026, depriving Tibetan children of education in their own mother tongue, culture, and community settings.
With regard to the primary school established and funded by residents of Jasag village, in Ragya township of Machen County, the centre cited local sources as saying that in Aug 2026, Chinese officials initially ordered it to stop teaching in Tibetan and, instead, switch to Simplified Chinese, citing the national policy for promoting Putonghua – or standard spoken Chinese – the common national language. When the school refused, authorities ordered its immediate closure while directing its students to enrol in government-run boarding schools.
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The Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen Grassland Girls School was closed on Aug 27. The monk-educator Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen founded the school in 2005 for a group often left behind: the daughters of nomads, who in pastoral households typically spend their days on domestic chores and tending the herds.
It enrolled students, totalling 240 by 2010, from across all the three traditional regions of Tibet. The first class graduated in 2010, and its students ranked at the top in the primary school examinations held across Golog, an achievement that gave the institution a reputation for academic excellence, noted bitterwinter.org Oct 20.
The report said that the school, founded on Oct 15, 2005, offered education and vocational training to girls from nomadic herding communities across the three Tibetan regions, teaching Buddhist philosophy, science, Tibetan language, traditional medicine, handicrafts, thangka painting and astrology. It was stated to have won numerous awards, with many of its graduates having become respected figures in Tibetan society.
China now operates the school as Ragya Town Girls Middle School under an arrangement described as “privately run, publicly funded,” with little or no room for independent functioning, noted bitterwinter.org Oct 20.
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The centre noted that on Dec 27, 2025, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress – China’s parliament – adopted revisions to its 2000 Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, which came into force on Jan 1, 2026, and which, among other things, removed a provision allowing exceptions to the general requirement that standard Chinese be used as the basic language of instruction in schools.
The centre said that most of the privately run Tibetan schools in the Golog region had been closed over the past four years. These included the Sengtrug Tagtse Middle School, the Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational School, and Dorjeten National Vocational and Technical School.
The Tibet.net report cited sources as saying the Chinese government was closing privately-run schools across Tibetan areas to accelerate national assimilation, moving Tibetan children into state-run institutions where they can be more easily subjected to political “re-education.”
It noted that after Sengtrug Tagtse School was closed in Jul 2021, the authorities ordered seven more privately-run Tibetan schools in Darlag, Machen, Gade and Chikdril counties in Golog prefecture to shut down. Then, on Jun 24, 2026, the Hungkar Dorje Vocational High School, which had taught Tibetan language and culture since 2008, was also forced to close permanently.