The Kalgidhar Trust, based at Baru Sahib in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, runs a network of Akal Academy schools across Punjab and neighbouring states, teaching a standard curriculum alongside Sikh religious instruction.
It began in 1986 with one school in a remote valley and now runs over a hundred, concentrated in rural areas where the alternative is a government school with vacancies or an unaffordable private one.
It traces its lineage to Sant Attar Singh of Mastuana, whose educational work in the early twentieth century is the origin of the network.
It is funded substantially from the diaspora.
It is the largest single institutional response to Punjab's rural education problem and it is a private religious network, which is worth stating without judgement in either direction. The state has not built an equivalent.
The academies are English medium, follow a national syllabus, and teach Punjabi and Sikh studies alongside it. They are placed deliberately in villages rather than in towns.
The university at Baru Sahib grew out of the same institution and offers degree courses including nursing and pharmacy, which is what most of its rural students are there for.
The model works because the diaspora pays the capital cost and the fees cover the running. Whether it could be reproduced without that funding is the question the state's own school system has not answered.