Welham Girls' School

Welham was named after the little Welsh village from where its founder, H.S. Oliphant hailed. A retired English headmistress, Oliphant started Welham Boys' School in 1937. She was struck by The Lawrence School, Sanawar and lack of schools of similar quality for the girls around Dehradun.

She acquired a palatial estate called Nasreen adjacent to Welham Boys' School to start a small boarding school for girls. There were no funds, staff, or school buildings. Oliphant recruited another retired English woman, Grace Mary Linnel, to run the boarding school for girls. Linnel became the founder principal of Welham Girls School, which started in 1957.[6] She was later awarded a Padma Shri for her contribution to education of girls. Welham Girls’ High School, as it was known then, established itself as a full-fledged boarding school. From its initial crop of 10 students, it has grown to over 550 students.

Like British boarding schools, Welham follows the house system. The school has 5 houses named after the popular birds found in the Doon Valley: Bulbuls, Flycatchers, Hoopoes, Orioles and Woodpeckers. The school emblem is also a bird, the kingfisher, which also lends its blue color as the school color. The house colors are also taken from the birds they are named after, red for Bulbuls, white for Flycatchers, deep yellow for Hoopoes, bright yellow for Orioles and green for Woodpeckers. There are regular competitions between the houses in disciplines such as sports, dance, music, debating, quizzing, dramatics. Each house is looked after by a house mistress and a matron and headed by a two student officials — a house captain and a vice captain. Junior and senior girls have separate hostels.

Students volunteer at local charities, such as Cheshire Home for the Handicapped and Raphael, a school for the blind and other charitable organizations. There is also an organized social service program on campus run by campus officials.

The school hosts competitive events amongst the five houses throughout the year in the sphere of sports and arts. Career counseling and life-skills programmes are offered.

Each student is expected to take up two activities each term. These include musical and creative activities such as craft, dramatics, sitar, tabla, vocal music, western music, bharatnatyam, kathak, folk dance and photography.[7]

Welham runs an exchange program with some schools in the UK and United States. These include: Millfield School in England, a co-educational residential school; Downe House School in Berkshire, UK; Groton School in Massachusetts, USA. These form an important part of the school's educational program to expose the girls to different cultures.

• 
  Brinda Karat, Politician
• 
  Kareena Kapoor, Actor
• 
  Meira Kumar, Speaker of the Lok Sabha
• 
  Tavleen Singh, Journalist
• 
  Deepa Mehta, Film director

• Grace Mary Linnel

• Official school page
• Welham Girls Alumni website