Last verified: 26 October 2026. Every dated milestone in this guide — Mizoram 2018-19, the 2021 all-schools opening, Kazhakootam’s September 2021 batch, Amaravathinagar’s first girl boarders, and the UP Sainik School NDA figures — is taken from the published reports cited in Sources. Where this guide works out a school year from an entry year, it says so plainly, and where no public record exists, it says that too instead of inventing a success story.
Photo: Pexels
Search for girls in Sainik Schools and you will find the same 2021 photographs again and again: ten girls at Kazhakootam, a new hostel at Amaravathinagar, a prime minister’s announcement. What you will not find is the follow-up. Nobody has published a “where are they now” for those first batches — no names, no pass-out parade, no neat list of who became what.
That gap is itself the honest answer, and it is worth saying before the milestones: the first girl cadets are not missing. They are simply inside a system that reports school-level results, not individual biographies. What follows is everything that is on the public record, plus the school-year arithmetic that tells you roughly where those batches stand today — clearly labelled as arithmetic, not reporting.
For most of their existence, Sainik Schools were all-boys institutions. The change came in two steps:
September 2021 is when the photographs were taken. Two schools’ first batches were reported in detail, and they are worth knowing by name because they show what “first batch” actually looked like on the ground.
Sainik School Kazhakootam, Kerala — ten girls. The school, founded in 1962, had never admitted a girl student in its history. On 8 September 2021 it welcomed its first batch of ten girls who had cleared AISSEE 2021: seven from Kerala, two from Bihar and one from Uttar Pradesh. Principal Colonel Dhirendra Kumar convened a special assembly in the school auditorium, and the school reported that a new house and dormitory had been built over the previous year to receive them.
Sainik School Amaravathinagar, Tamil Nadu — the first girl boarders. The same month, Amaravathinagar admitted girl cadets as boarders for the first time in its history, based on AISSEE performance for the 2021-22 session. A Press Information Bureau (Defence) release reported that online classes for the cadets began on 21 September, followed by an orientation and document verification visit with their parents. Their hostel was named the Rani Velu Nachiyar Girls’ Hostel, after the queen of Sivaganga — a deliberate piece of symbolism for the first girls on that campus.
Notice what both reports have in common: the schools did not simply open a door. They built accommodation, ran orientations and staged welcome assemblies. The infrastructure changed first; the girls arrived into buildings that had been prepared for them.
Here is what school-year arithmetic — not any published profile — tells us about the 2021-22 entrants:
| 2021-22 entry class | School year in 2026-27 | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Class 6 entrants (2021-22) | Class 11 | In senior school now, one year from Class 12 and the NDA written exam |
| Class 9 entrants (2021-22) | Passed Class 12 in 2024 | Past school age; in college, in training, or preparing for competitive exams |
That is the full extent of what can be said about the 2021 batches as a group without inventing individual stories. No Sainik School publishes a named list of what its first girl cadets went on to do, and this guide will not fill that silence with plausible-sounding names. If a website offers you a named “first girl cadet who is now an officer” without a citable report behind it, treat it the way you would treat any other unverified admission claim: as a story, not a fact.
There is one school where girls’ progress past Class 12 is on the public record, and it is the strongest evidence that the pipeline works. The Times of India and Hindustan Times reported on UP Sainik School, Lucknow:
Those are school-level results, not individual biographies, but they answer the question parents actually ask — do girls from Sainik Schools genuinely reach the NDA stage, or is the 10 percent quota decorative? — with reported numbers rather than reassurance.
The wider horizon matters too. Women became eligible for the NDA entrance examination following the Supreme Court’s direction in August 2021; the first women cadets joined the NDA in 2022; and the first batch of women cadets graduated from the NDA in May 2025. A girl entering a Sainik School in Class 6 today is walking a road whose far end has already been walked — by women, in uniform, at the passing-out parade.
If your daughter is preparing for AISSEE 2027, the first batches’ story gives you four practical takeaways:
The first girl cadets of Sainik Schools are, in 2026, senior-school students and young adults — the Class 6 entrants of 2021 are in Class 11, the Class 9 entrants left school in 2024, and girls from Sainik Schools are demonstrably clearing the NDA written exam and SSB. What does not exist yet is the individual follow-up story, and that is fine: five years is enough time for a pipeline to start working, not enough for a legend to be written. The next honest milestone to watch is the first cohort of 2021 Class 6 girls reaching the NDA written exam in 2027-28. When they do, this guide will report the numbers — school-level, sourced, and without invented names.
When did girls first join Sainik Schools?
The first experiment was at Sainik School Chhingchhip, Mizoram, in the 2018-19 academic year. Girls joined all 33 Sainik Schools from the 2021-22 session, after the Prime Minister’s Independence Day announcement in 2021.
How many seats are reserved for girls in Sainik Schools?
Ten percent of each year’s intake in every Sainik School is reserved for girls, as announced in 2021 and confirmed in the Defence release quoted by The Hindu, The Times of India and Mathrubhumi.
Where are the 2021 first-batch girl cadets now?
By simple school-year arithmetic, girls who entered Class 6 in 2021-22 are in Class 11 in 2026-27, and girls who entered Class 9 in 2021-22 finished Class 12 in 2024. No school publishes named individual tracking of these batches, so specific careers of individual first-batch girls are not publicly reported.
Have Sainik School girl cadets reached the NDA stage?
Yes, at school level: UP Sainik School, Lucknow, reported that in its 2023-24 batch, 20 cadets including five girls cleared both the NDA written exam and the SSB interview, and in its 2024-25 batch two of six girl candidates cleared the NDA written exam.
Can a girl from a Sainik School join the NDA today?
Yes. Women have been eligible for the NDA entrance exam since the Supreme Court’s 2021 direction, the first women cadets joined the NDA in 2022, and the first batch of women cadets graduated from the NDA in May 2025.
Do girls face a separate merit list in AISSEE?
Girls compete for the 10 percent of seats reserved for them in each school. Check the current year’s AISSEE information bulletin for the exact seat matrix of the school you are targeting, since the split is applied school by school.
Related reading on this site: Girls in Sainik Schools: How the 10% Quota Works · Sainik School for Girls 2027 · Girls in NDA: The Complete 2027 Guide
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