What Makes Roots Schools Different? Four Groups Share One Name, So Check Which One You Mean

Ask five parents what Roots is like and you may be hearing about five different schools. The name is used by at least four groups in Pakistan, and each runs its own website, campus list, admissions office and fee rules: the Roots School System (RSS), Roots International Schools & Colleges (RISC), Roots Millennium Schools, which belongs to The Millennium Education (TME), and Roots IVY. Three of them point back to the same beginning, and the RSS site names Roots IVY's chief executive as a director of its own flagship campus. According to the RSS history page, that beginning was a school Mrs Riffat Mushtaq started at 74 Harley Street, Rawalpindi, on 10 April 1988. So the useful question is not what makes Roots different, but which Roots a particular campus belongs to and what that group actually offers there.

The groups describe their links in their own words, and we found nothing more formal than that. RISC's history page calls RISC part of the Roots School System and says it was founded by Mrs Mushtaq's son, Walid Mushtaq, whom its About page lists as CEO and founder. On TME's About page, the network is presented as an extension of the Roots School System, with Dr Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq at its head as chief executive. On the RSS site, the Directors Desk page names Mushtaque R. Chaudhry as CEO and Mrs Mushtaq as founder and chairperson, while its A Levels page introduces Dr Khadija Mushtaq as executive director of the RSS flagship campus in DHA Phase I, Islamabad, and as CEO of Roots IVY International Schools & Colleges. Common origins aside, these are distinct operations. In Islamabad's register each campus is filed separately, so check which group's name is on your prospectus and fee bill.

Roots IVY is the hardest to check right now. When we tried rootsivyintschools.edu.pk on 19 October 2026, it returned a page saying the site is currently unavailable. Other official records still show it operating. ICT-PEIRA, which registers private schools in Islamabad, lists three Roots IVY entries: a Gandhara Campus in H-8/1, a school in the NPF area of PWD, and a River View Campus on the GT Road. Cambridge International's school finder lists a Roots IVY International School/College in Lahore. If you are considering a Roots IVY campus, ask the campus for its prospectus, fee schedule and registration details in writing, because there is no group website to check them against.

Size claims vary a lot, and the groups' own pages do not always agree. The RSS About page says it has more than 100 campuses and nearly 25,000 students, and puts the school's age at over 34 years, which suggests the text has not been updated for some time. Its Our Network page, though, lists eight sites: five in Rawalpindi, one in DHA Phase I, Islamabad, one in Gujar Khan and one in Clifton, Karachi. RISC's campuses page has 23 entries plus an upcoming campus in Gujranwala, and its home page claims 20,000 active students. TME puts itself at 48 campuses across more than 20 cities with over 20,000 learners, though the regional figures on the same About page total 46. Its campus maps carry 48 pins, 10 of them for Future World School, which the same page describes as part of TME's wider group. None of these figures has been checked independently, so ask how many pupils are at your campus, not across the network.

Campus nicknames are where families most often get confused, because the groups reuse similar names. Gandhara is a RISC campus in Wah Cantt on RISC's list and a Roots IVY campus in H-8/1, Islamabad, in PEIRA's register. Liverpool is a RISC campus in the Police Foundation area of Islamabad and a TME campus in Latifabad, Hyderabad. Riverview is a pair of RISC campuses in Muzaffarabad, while River View is the Roots IVY campus on Islamabad's GT Road. H-8 holds two RISC addresses, Wellington at Plot 66, Street 7 and MIUC at Plot 67, Street 8, both in H-8/4, close to the Roots IVY entry in H-8/1. PEIRA also lists an Exploreville School marked 'Old: Roots International School' at the G-13/4 service-road address that RISC now gives for its Winchester Campus. Write down the group, the campus name and the full address before you compare anything; the second table below sets out these overlaps.

The early and primary years are taught differently in each group, and RSS's own pages are not consistent. The RSS menu lists Pearson Edexcel Early Years and Pearson Edexcel iPrimary for Classes 1 to 6, yet its Primary School page describes an in-house Roots International Primary Programme (RIPP) for Grades I to V, which it says is benchmarked against Cambridge's primary programme. RISC names its stages Early Years, Primary Years and Lower Secondary, each called a programme. Its Primary Years Programme shares a name with the International Baccalaureate's PYP, but RISC's qualifications page does not describe it as an IB programme. In TME's FAQ, primary classes follow Edexcel, and the Cambridge curriculum takes over from lower secondary through A Level; Cambridge Checkpoint appears in its list of qualifications. Ask any campus which books and which external tests your child's class actually uses.

At secondary level, each group advertises a wide menu, but individual campuses offer less. RISC lists IGCSE or O Level through Cambridge or Pearson Edexcel, Matric (SSC), A Level, Oxford AQA, an LRN Level 3 Diploma in Pre-U Foundation Studies, and HSSC streams in FSc Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering, ICS, ICom and FA. RSS lists O Level, IGCSE and Edexcel, Matric through FBISE, FA, FSc and ICS, and A Level with Oxford AQA, but its network page shows that only its 75 Harley Street school in Rawalpindi and its DHA Phase I campus in Islamabad run from Montessori to O Level and Inter. Of its other sites, Askari X goes to HSSC and Adiala Road to Matric, while the rest stop at Early Years, Grade VI or Grade VII. TME's FAQ says IGCSE is taken through Cambridge and Edexcel and SSC through FBISE, but its Matric page names only four campuses that teach SSC, and two of them carry the Future World School name. Its directory of A Level principals lists eight campuses, five of them Future World School & College branches. If you want Matric, FSc or A Level, ask whether your child can stay at the same campus or will need to move.

Independent directories confirm only part of what the groups say. TME's IB page says its One World Campus in E-11/4, Islamabad, is authorised for the IB Middle Years Programme, but the same page calls it both the second authorised MYP school in the twin cities and the only one in the northern region. One World's PEIRA filing includes a fee line labelled IBD. The IB's own school directory refused our requests, so we could not confirm the status; check ibo.org yourself. Cambridge's Find a Cambridge school tool, searched on 19 October 2026 for 19 cities, listed several Roots Millennium and Future World School campuses, including One World, B-17 and Kingston in Islamabad. It also listed Roots International entries in Karachi (Hamilton), Lahore and Muzaffarabad, and the Roots IVY entry in Lahore. It showed no entry under the Roots International or Roots School System name in Islamabad or Rawalpindi. That is not proof that those campuses do not teach Cambridge courses, since the RISC and RSS admissions pages both say exam fees are passed to the British Council, but it is a fair question to ask which Cambridge centre your child would sit exams through.

Every group also makes big claims about itself, and parents should treat these as marketing until shown evidence. RSS says it opened the first international Montessori school in the twin cities, was the first school to bring robotics and STEM to all its campuses in Pakistan, and is the only Pakistani school with four Guinness World Records. TME says it hosted Pakistan's first Confucius Classroom, holds ISO 9001 certification and belongs to the German government's PASCH schools network. RISC announced a partnership with the University of Northampton in June 2026, and says that RISC and its MIUC college are affiliated with the University of the Punjab for BBA, BS Computer Science and Associate Degree in Commerce programmes. We did not verify any of these claims with the organisations named. If one of them matters to your choice, ask the campus for the certificate or agreement, and check with the university or body concerned.

Day-to-day features are easier to check on a visit. TME's FAQ says every classroom has Promethean smart boards and iPads, classes hold no more than 25 learners, and the school day runs from 8:00 to 2:00 for Early Years to Grade 2 and to 2:30 for older pupils, with a 12:30 finish on Fridays; its About page describes a MATRIX platform for coursework and parent communication and a TechEdX programme in coding, AI and robotics. RISC's home page describes a learning management system, Office 365 accounts for students and a robotics programme for primary pupils run with ROBOTMEA, and its timings page sets an 8:00 to 2:30 day, or 8:00 to 12:30 for Early Years, with a morning assembly that includes Quran recitation with English and Urdu translation. RSS says its robotics programme builds skills in children aged 8 to 14, describes smart-board classrooms, with a usual day of 8:00 to 2:00 and Montessori classes finishing between 12:30 and 1:00. A website cannot tell you how well any of this is used, so ask to see a lesson and the parent app before you pay.

The fee rules each group publishes differ in ways that affect your cash flow. On RISC's admissions page, the charges run from registration and admission fees (neither refundable) and a refundable security deposit to 'bimonthly' tuition, a yearly resource charge and smaller items such as ID card, ICT and lab fees; tuition is spread across all 12 calendar months and revised each year. Its Tuition & Fee Policy page, however, embeds an older policy document, TFP-001, under which exam classes pay tuition by semester in three instalments, the first due in September, so ask which rule applies now. RSS lists the same main heads plus an LMS fee, says O Level, IGCSE and A Level tuition is paid quarterly, charges Rs 1,000 for the prospectus and admission form, and says its fee policy can vary by region and campus. TME publishes no amounts; its FAQ says a fee bill is issued after the entry test and paid through a digital platform, and that uniforms and course books are bought online from its sellers. On scholarships, RISC's page still shows a 2022-23 table of tuition waivers based on O Level, IGCSE, Matric and AS results, TME offers them only at AS and A Level, and RSS says it offers them at selected schools and on merit at AS and A Level.

Islamabad is the only city where we could see fee figures filed by the schools themselves, and they are patchy. On ICT-PEIRA's register, the newest Roots Millennium filing is One World's for 2025-26, with Grade I at Rs 31,850, each IGCSE year at Rs 43,980 and an admission fee of Rs 35,000. For 2024-25, four more Roots Millennium campuses put Grade I at Rs 23,300 to Rs 24,290. The two RISC entries we matched by address, H-8/4 and Richmond, and the RSS campus in DHA Phase I have nothing on file after 2022-23. For Roots IVY, the River View campus's 2025-26 filing puts Grade I at Rs 46,615. Its Gandhara campus in H-8/1 is the only Roots-named school with a 2026-27 filing, but its lines run from Rs 720,000 for Grade I to Rs 900,000 for A Level, many times any other Roots filing, and the register does not say whether amounts are monthly or yearly. PEIRA states that schools supply this data and are responsible for any discrepancy. Use these figures to ask questions, not as today's price, and see /news/school-fees-in-islamabad for how to read a filing.

Budget for books and uniforms too. Roots International and Roots Millennium were among 17 private school systems that the Competition Commission of Pakistan said on 21 November 2025 it had served with show-cause notices, over claims that parents were made to buy logo-branded notebooks, workbooks and uniforms from approved vendors. Across the school systems it examined, the commission said its inquiry found study packs priced up to 280% above similar items in the open market. It gave the schools 14 days to respond, and Profit reported on 28 December 2025 that the deadline had been extended to 30 December 2025. Dawn reported the notices the same day. These are allegations, and in our searches on 19 October 2026 we found no report of a final order. Ask any Roots campus for the full year's book and uniform list with prices, and whether you may buy items elsewhere.

SchoolNama's own listings show the same confusion, and they are not yet tidy. On 19 October 2026 a script found 85 records with 'Roots' in the name across our five campus files. At least six belong to unrelated schools, such as Golden Roots, Kinder Roots Montessori and The Seeds and Roots Montessori, and several are duplicates. Six RISC branches that RISC places in Islamabad, Sialkot, Abbottabad, Wah Cantt and Muzaffarabad carried a Faisalabad label in our data that day, so rely on each group's own list for locations. Useful starting points are /schools/roots-school-system-rawalpindi for the original 74 Harley Street school, /schools/roots-international-wellington-campus-islamabad, /schools/roots-millennium-schools-one-world-campus-one-world-campus-islamabad and /schools/roots-ivy-international-schools-river-view-campus-islamabad. These are basic profiles without fee data. City pages such as /islamabad, /rawalpindi, /lahore and /karachi show other schools nearby, and /compare puts two finalists side by side. TME's FAQ says it does not run its own transport and asks parents for their driver's documents, so check /pick-and-drop and confirm any operator yourself. If switching groups means switching boards, /tutors lists help for the gaps that leaves. Earlier guides, /news/roots-millennium-vs-beaconhouse, /news/roots-vs-city-school and /news/froebels-vs-roots-islamabad, compare individual Roots groups with other networks.