Kenya High School
The Kenya High School is a public girls' high school located on Mandera Road in Kileleshwa in Nairobi.
The school, which follows the national curriculum, is one of Kenya's 112 national schools and also one of the 18 prestigious Cluster III secondary schools. Located on a 150-acre campus some six Km from the Central Business District, the institution caters for 2000 students who attend Forms 1–4 in seven to eleven streams, at the end of which the students sit for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams.
Starting in the mid-1990s, the school became a primarily boarding school and accepts day-scholars only on a case-by-case basis.
The Kenya High School consistently performs well in national secondary exams, and has enforced a strict code of conduct to be followed by all.
Background and history
The Beginnings
Christian missions were the original providers of institutionalised education for African children in the East Africa Protectorate. Their stated purpose was to “civilise and convert the African”. They also set up teacher training college-type institutions whose graduates went back to their villages as “evangelists” to “break the yoke of primitivity and usher in civilisation”.Formal institutional education via the colonial government began in October 1904, with the appointment of Alfred John Turner, of the Indian Educational Department, as Headmaster of the Railway School, Nairobi, which had been established in 1900 to serve the families of the I.B.E.A. Company. At that time there were few Europeans in the country, and formal education was only required for the children of European, Eurasian and Indian employees on the Uganda Railway.
The Railway School was taken over by the government in 1908. In 1910, the Board of Education proceeded to separate the provision for European, Indian, Arab and African education, and a separate European School was founded under Turner's headmastership, The European School, Nairobi. This co-education primary school marks the beginnings of Nairobi Primary School, The Kenya High School and Nairobi School formerly known as the Prince of Wales School. 1910 is considered the birth year of present-day The Kenya High School.
The school opened with 110 children and gradually increased the number until it obtained its maximum of about 250 children in 1918. It started in buildings on the former Police Barracks adjacent to Government House on Nairobi Hill, which is the location of the present-day Nairobi Primary School. About 130 boarders were accommodated in new buildings of timber and iron sheets two miles away, by the old Buller's camp next to Nairobi Club. By this time present Kenya had been transformed into The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, a British Crown Colony.
The school's shield-and-lion crest was designed for the co-educational European School Nairobi in July 1926 by Michael William Alfred Berkley.
In keeping with the colonial government's then commitment to improving institutional education in Kenya, of land on the Hill were allocated for new buildings. The architect, Sir Herbert Baker, drew up the design, and in 1928 a fine set of spacious new buildings was ready for occupation.
In 1930, when the colonial government initiated the classification of secondary schools, the European School Nairobi was the only one accorded this status in the whole country, while the rest of the schools remained primary and feeder schools.
Separation of Genders
In 1931 the genders at the school were separated. The secondary girls moved to the upper floor of the school, while using the Pillared Hall for assembly.The boys' secondary school was moved to a 600-acre allotment in the Kabete area, leaving the girls behind with the primary school pupils. The original idea for the name of the boys' school was Kabete Boys Secondary School, but the first headmaster, Captain Bertram William Lothian Nicholson, thought this to be too clumsy and therefore the name Prince of Wales School was suggested and eventually adopted.
The first Headmistress of the girls' school, Miss G. H. Kerby, was appointed in 1931, with the school retaining the primary school's shield-and-lion crest.
Thus, 1931 was the actual beginning of the present Kenya High School and The Prince of Wales School.
Captain Nicholson - who had been the primary school's headmaster - is credited as the originator of the girls' school's motto, Servire Est Regnare.
In 1935 the school was renamed The European Girls' School. The current name, The Kenya High School was officially registered in 1938.
Lenana School also credits its existence to the European School Nairobi, which was its feeder school.
The War Years
During World War II, European children were not immediately evacuated from Nairobi but when Italy entered the war in 1940, Nairobi boarders were sent upcountry. 100 Prince of Wales boys were sent to Naivasha, where they lived in Sparks Hotel, while the European Girls' School pupils went to Eldoret Hotel. The girls' school boarding block in Nairobi was turned over to the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, who erected extra corrugated iron buildings, while the Prince of Wales school became a military hospital.However, day pupils were not evacuated, thus the Prince of Wales day boys had joint lessons with the day girls upstairs at European School Nairobi. The school was protected by barricades and sandbags. Following the defeat of the Italians, in the Christmas break at the end of 1941, all Prince of Wales pupils returned to their own buildings in Kabete. The girl boarders also returned to Nairobi, to their school on the top floor of Nairobi Primary School. Principal Kerby, a disciplinarian, forbade the girls to speak to their brothers while they shared the building. She was replaced in May 1942 by Miss Janette Stott, who was considered more approachable than Miss Kerby. Miss Stott got the girls to knit long white operation stockings for the troops.
Own Campus
In 1950 – while Miss Stott was Principal – 100 boarders moved into two boarding blocks of the partially completed new school on a 150-acre site in Kileleshwa, which had been constructed at an astronomical cost of £700,000 through Miss Kerby's connection to colonial administrators. The school was modelled on the English public school and grammar school tradition.Africanisation
A breakthrough was made in 1961 when the school admitted two ethnic African and two ethnic Indian girls. The first ethnic African girls were Ann Wachira and Dr. Irene Eunice Gathinji, who were both Science students. Eunice joined Boma from Alliance Girls High School for her A-levels, since AGHS at that time did not have sufficient lab provisions. Segregation was declared illegal on 1 June 1963, and the Kenyanisation of schools began in earnest after 1965 when the government set out nine objectives for education in Kenya. These included fostering a sense of nationhood and promoting national unity and serving all Kenyans without discrimination. This time also saw the admission of 120 ethnic African and 100 ethnic Indian girls. History was also made that year when the school selected the first ethnic African Deputy Headgirl, Hon. Ruth Waruhiu.It was during this Kenyanisation phase, with Miss A. A. Levers' as Principal, that Dr. Pamela Ogot Kola joined the faculty on 1 May 1965 as the first ethnic African teacher, teaching English literature. Hon. Winifred Nyiva Mwendwa, who taught Domestic Science, was also employed at around this time.
Miss V. M. Barnes became Principal during a period of transition. In 1974 the school was officially taken over by the government and it began to admit more African pupils and teachers.
The first ethnic African Headmistress, Rose Kariuki, served from January to July 1977, then handed over to Margaret Wanjohi. Wanjohi went on to lead the school until 1999, when she moved as Director of Starehe Girls' Centre, having been the longest-serving Principal at The Kenya High School. It was during Wanjohi's tenure that she was also promoted as the first female Principal of a Kenyan institution. Following the establishment of three Secondary School Principals’ grades in the 2018 Career Progression Guidelines by the Teachers Service Commission, the school's first headteacher to acquire the title of Chief Principal was Flora Mulatya.
"The Three"
As part of The Three, The Kenya High School is one of the oldest schools of the former East Africa Protectorate government's European Secondary Boarding Schools, coupled with Nairobi School and Lenana School. Nairobi School has always been referred to as The Kenya High School's brother school, as the two schools have maintained a cordial rapport over the years by inviting each other to their school events and sports galas. The Kenya High School also enjoys a similar historical relationship with Lenana School.All three schools still retain some English traditions and infrastructure handed down from the colonial settler era.
Admission and performance
As a national school, up to 2024 The Kenya High School admitted girls from across Kenya's 47 counties who had performed exceptionally well in the national Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination.Annual enrolment has steadily increased over the years, from around 700 in the late 1980s/early 1990s to nearly 2000 as of 2024. The high numbers are a result of Kenya adopting the Policy on Universal Access to Basic Education, which seeks to ensure that all children enrol in primary school and complete their secondary school education with a 100% transition rate.
The Kenya High School has severally produced the top performing girl nationwide in KCSE:
- 1989 : Sylvia Waweru
- 1996: Vivian Doris Ashioya
- 1999: Grace Ikahu
- 2001: Mary Kubo
- 2008: Velma Mukhongo
- Number Two in KCSE 2016
- Number One in KCSE 2019 with 76 students scoring straight As
- Number Two in KCSE 2020 with 64 As
- Number Four in KSCE 2021 with 53 As
- Number Three in KCSE 2024 with 70 As