Cadet Colleges in Pakistan

Cadet Colleges are special school system of the Pakistan Armed Forces that act as feeder schools for the services officer training academies of the Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force.

They are specifically intended to prepare young students from a very broad range of socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds to pass the demanding physical, educational, psychological and behavioural standards of the Inter Services Selection Board (ISSB). This is distinct from the purpose of regular cantonment schools intended to educate the children of service members.

The schools are overseen by the Joint Staff Headquarters (JSHQ) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.

This system was first established in the pre-Partition, pre-Independence era in order to support the push to indigenise the officer corps of the British Indian Army, a reward to the social classes that had provided loyal support for the British Empire's war efforts in the 1914-1918 First World War and which in return expected greater opportunities for participation at higher levels.

The very first to be established was the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College (RIMC) in March 1922 at Doon Valley which was then in Punjab Province (now the Indian state of Uttarkhand) following the severe difficulties in acceptance and adjustment faced by the first batch of South Asian cadets sent directly to Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England.

RIMC was lost with the partition of the country and the army in August 1947 and became the Indian Republic's Rashtriya Indian Military College. The first cadet college to be built by the newly established Pakistan Army was the Punjab Cadet College Hasanabdal, Attock District in Punjab in 1954. Faujdarhat Cadet College was built in Chittagong, then East Pakistan in 1958.

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