THE ROYAL ACADEMY

THE ROYAL ACADEMY

The Royal Academy (TRA) is a co-educational, residential school with students from Grades 7 to 12. The objective of The Royal Academy is to stand out as a school of excellence, offering high-quality, wholistic education to its students, particularly those from the marginalised sections of society. The Royal Academy aims to create a student community that is balanced and diverse in terms of national character and cultural experience and has representation from all 20 Dzongkhags. As of 2025, The Royal Academy has a total of 334 students.

The Royal Academy has been implementing the Bhutan Baccalaureate Learning Process since 2016, with its teachers and students playing a pioneering role in its development and in providing critical inputs to the Education Research Centre and the Teacher Development Centre. Their experiences continue to shape the evolution of the Bhutan Baccalaureate and support its transition to other schools.

LEARNING FRAMEWORK

The Learning Framework is the underlying framework that guides everything that happens in The Royal Academy at the Druk Gyalpo’s Institute. The Learning Framework and the Bhutan Baccalaureate Learning Process share a reciprocal relationship in their design and contextualisation. The Learning Framework is transacted through the Learning Process, and the Learning Process influences the design of the Learning Framework for the following year.

The Learning Framework gives equal importance to the Five Areas of Development, and the Learning Process continuously focuses on development of the learners’ Skills, Processes, and Watermark. The Learning Framework is constantly evolving, guided by the needs of the individuals, the school, and the extended community, while the Five Areas of Development and the Skills, Processes and Watermark serve as cornerstones for the Learning Framework.

The Royal Academy Learning Experience Videos

The Royal Academy Learning Experience, which includes a series of videos, is based on the premise of cross pollination and will explain concepts from different Domains and the Five Areas of Development. The overarching purpose of these videos is to create a learning experience for the viewer while speaking to different intellectual abilities. The videos are contextualized to Bhutan so that the learners from Bhutan get an intimate understanding of various concepts through a Bhutanese lens. 

To watch our other Learning Experience Videos, click the button below.

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SEVEN GIFTS

Every year the students of The Royal Academy collect Seven Gifts from the communities that they come from. The Seven Gifts are local Songs, Dances, Stories, Patterns, Games and Languages. The Seven Gifts are an integral part of the Learning Experience at The Royal Academy as they signify the importance and role of the community in the life of the child. The gifts that have been brought by the students of The Royal Academy have been converted into various ebooks and are used in the Learning Experiences in the School. The ebooks can be accessed below. 

STUDENT ADMISSIONS

  • The guiding philosophy of The Royal Academy focuses on the wholistic development of individuals to help them actualise their innate potential across all areas of development — cerebral, physical, social, emotional and spiritual — and enable each individual to become an exceptional leader and good human being. Emphasis is given not only on high academic achievement but also on the development of character in order to foster fundamental values such as honesty, integrity, teamwork, generosity and compassion. Through this approach, The Royal Academy promotes a culture of excellence in all aspects of student life.

    The Royal Academy aims to cultivate a student community that is balanced and diverse in terms of the national character and cultural experience, with respect to the academic and special interest backgrounds of the students. The Student Admission Process guides and ensures a transparent, explicit, clear, and consistent admission of students, maintaining a balanced composition of the student community from all the 20 Dzongkhags.

  • The admission of students is only in the entry level of Grade VII. The selection of students for admission are based on two processes.

    • A. National Character Representation: To maintain and uphold the national character of the student community at The Royal Academy, every year a group of students from all the 20 Dzongkhags are enrolled through this process. This year, a total of 120 students – six students from each Dzongkhag (four from socio-economically vulnerable families and two Academic Toppers) will be invited to the Winter Camp from the 17th of February 2025 to the 22nd of February 2025.

    • B. Online Application :For admission into 2025, the Online Application closed at 4 PM on Monday, February 10, 2025. Only the shortlisted students will be invited to The Royal Academy Winter Camp from the 17th of February 2025 to the 22nd of February 2025.

  • A total of 150 students will be invited to this year’s Winter Camp scheduled from the 17th of February 2025 to the 22nd of February 2025. A total of 60 students will be selected for admissions and scholarships into Grade VII.

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