Sainik School Kazhakootam
public school in India
Sainik School Kazhakootam (often abbreviated as SSKZM), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, is a residential school under the Ministry of Defence, Government of India
The concept of Sainik Schools was proposed by V. K. Krishna Menon, who was the first Defence Minister of India from 1957 to 1962. The objective was to set up schools run on military lines in each state of India, which would facilitate the grooming of boys for intake into the various military academies such as the National Defence Academy and the Indian Naval Academy, thus, rectifying the regional and class imbalance in the officer cadre of the Indian Military.
Location
Kazhakootam was chosen as the location in the early 1960s by the then Chief Minister of Kerala, Pattom Thanu Pillai. An area of 300 acres (1.2 km2) of undulating terrain was acquired on a hillock near Kazhakootam, close to National Highway 66 and about 18 km away from Thiruvananthapuram. The campus is located on a laterite cliff of 170 feet elevation between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. A part of the land that was previously part of the campus (around 75 acres) was handed over to KINFRA in early 2000's on lease. The present land area of Sainik School campus is about 225 acres (0.91 km2).
Inception
Sainik School Kazhakootam started functioning in the barracks lent by the Indian Army at the army camp at Pangode, Thiruvananthapuram, on 20 January 1962. The initial intake was to classes V, VI, VII, and, VIII, and the strength at inception was 120. This increased to 132 six months later when admission to class XI was opened.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sainik School Kazhakootam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.