Abolish this Colonial Relic Called the Boarding School

On Friday the 6^th of September 2024, Kenyans woke up to the distressing news that at least 17 pupils of Hillside Endarasha Academy in Kieni, Nyeri County, had lost their lives through a dormitory fire. The dormitory, housing Grades 4 to 8 boys, had 156 boys. Several other boys sustained injuries. On Monday 9 September 2024, Citizen TV reported that according to the government, a total of 19 bodies had been retrieved from the site of the inferno, while another two died in hospital.

Sadly, the Endarasha Hillside Academy tragedy is not the first, second, or even third fire tragedy in a Kenyan boarding school. The Star lists several other such fires, some of which snuffed out precious young lives – Bombolulu Secondary School in 1998 (26 girls), Asumbi Girls Secondary School in 2012 (8 students), Kyanguli Secondary School in 2001 (67 boys), and Moi Girls School Nairobi in 2017 (10 students). It is noteworthy that most of the fires in this list and others that did not result in deaths occurred during protests by boarding school students. Even as I continued to write this article, news came in on the evening of Saturday 7 September 2024 that a fire had broken out in Isiolo Girls High School resulting in injuries to three girls. On Monday 9 September 2024, The Star reported fire incidents in dormitories at Bukhalalire Secondary School in Busia County and Ortum Boys in West Pokot County resulting in damage to property. All these incidents naturally raise the question: must we retain boarding schools despite these calamities?

A Historical Overview

The Encyclopedia Brittanica provides useful information about the origin and purpose of boarding schools around the world, and I will highlight in this paragraph and in the next two what is most relevant in it to our present reflections. According to the article, “Boarding schools were present in India during the Vedic period (1500 to 800 BCE). Students stayed with their guru (teacher) at a gurukul (literally, “house of the teacher”) and studied primarily religious teachings and traditional scriptures, as well as politics and science. […] Access was restricted on the basis of caste.”

In the UK, the history of the King’s School in Canterbury goes back to 597 CE, but little is known with certainty about its earliest days. Around 1441, King Henry VIII re-established it, and its current name, Eton College, began to be used. Henry VI intended it to provide a free education to 70 boys, something it still does today for select students chosen on the basis of their performance or financial need, while it charges other students one of the highest tuition fees in the United Kingdom.

Canada’s oldest boarding school is the King’s-Edgehill School, founded as King’s Collegiate School in 1788 in Windsor, Nova Scotia. The US is not as known for its boarding schools, and they are today equated with “prep schools”, many of which were set up in the east of the country from the 18th century. They include the West Nottingham Academy in Maryland founded in 1744, and the Linden Hall School for Girls in Pennsylvania established in 1746.

According to Wilson Sossion, “The history of boarding schools in Kenya dates back to 1902 when Nairobi School, formerly The Prince of Wales, was established. It was followed by Maseno Government School in 1906, Tumutumu Mission School and Kenya High School (1908), Thogoto School, now Thogoto Teacher Training College (1910), Kabaa Boys High School (1923), Alliance High School (1926), Yala High School (1927). These then opened a floodgate of similar institutions across the country in subsequent years.” According to The Star, by 2018, boarding schools comprised 80 per cent of all schools in Kenya. Sossion goes on to note that Ministry of Education records show that the colonial government, in collaboration with missionary societies, established boarding schools to keep African children away from their indigenous cultural environments, purportedly to protect them from “retrogressive customs” such as female genital mutilation, early marriages, “nomadism”, and child labour. No wonder Ngugi wa Thiong’o refers to the Alliance High School where he received his secondary school formal education away from his home as “the house of the interpreter”.

Sossion’s last observation above brings to mind the policy of the US Federal Government, which, between 1819 and 1969, established and/or supported the setting up of several hundred boarding schools for the children of Native Americans (“Red Indians”) in order to separate them from their families and assimilate them into the dominant “white” culture so as to enable it to claim native lands more easily. The Encyclopedia Brittanica notes that “hundreds of thousands of Native children attended these schools, most of them forced to do so by agents who withheld essential food and supplies from their parents if the children did not attend”. The federal government preferred boarding schools that were away from the so-called Native Reserves to enhance the distance between the children and their parents, and the children were punished if they spoke their native languages. Similar schools were also established in Canada from 1876, and continued to operate until the 1990s. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, “Thousands of children died in these schools, and physical and sexual abuse were common.”

The colonising “white” populations also set up boarding schools to assimilate indigenous populations in Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America, and in the Scandinavian countries. In 2008, the prime ministers of Canada and Australia each issued an apology for the setting up of such boarding schools but, of course, the damage had already been done; and as we say around here, ‘Sorry’ si dawa. Saying ‘I am sorry’ is not medicine.

A case for the planned abolition of boarding schools

There are at least four considerations that lead me to the view that we should resolutely plan for the abolition of boarding schools.

First, a state education system worth its salt ought to be characterised by equity, which would mean ensuring that each and every neighbourhood in the country has high quality day schools that provide as good an education as any other anywhere in the country, rendering boarding schools unnecessary. To be sure, we are currently very far from that ideal, which is part of the reason students vociferously compete for places in boarding schools that turn out good grades in public exams. There is no reason why we should accept that we shall have this unsatisfactory situation in perpetuity.

Second, the purpose of a school is to facilitate learning, not to provide accommodation and catering services. When a school tries to meet these two latter needs, it often does it poorly. No wonder many boarding school protests are about the poor quality of food. Yet the fire tragedies are doubtless the most powerful indication of the dismally low quality of such services in our boarding schools. On 8 October 2020, The Star published an audit report that indicated that many secondary schools in the country did not have the right equipment and tools to handle fires, contrary to the Schools Safety Standard Manual, which requires the institutions to, among others, have fire extinguishers, fire blankets and fire alarms. 

Yet more distressing is the fact that the audit indicates that in January 2019, the Ministry of Education directed schools not to use any monies from their maintenance and improvement budgets to procure firefighting equipment! This is despite the fact that in 2017 the same ministry had launched the Education Sector Disaster Management Policy! Furthermore, Wilson Sossian observes that the 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary school has resulted in a drastic lowering of the quality of services in boarding schools, leading to their being abhorred by many in the country. Thus, turning boarding schools into day schools would release them from the responsibility of providing accommodation, food and night security, thereby enabling them to redirect vast human and financial resources to the enhancing of actual learning.

Third, quite often, minors in boarding schools are left to their own devices at night, leading to the spread of all manner of anti-social behaviour such as bullying, substance abuse and inadequate peer advice on sexuality. There was the case of the 1991 St. Kizito Secondary School Tigania tragedy, in which high school boys attacked high school girls in a dormitory, and repeatedly raped them. When it was all over, 19 girls lay dead from a variety of causes, including suffocation and trampling; seventy-one others were injured. About seven years ago, the country was shocked to learn of so-called “action nights” at the Alliance High School where students bullied new students through beatings, forcing them to lie on graves, and making them to crawl on wet grass, among other indignities.

Fourth, boarding schools rob children of the opportunity to benefit from the love and guidance of their parents or guardians on a daily basis. Many pupils in boarding school suffer excruciating homesickness not only because of the poor quality food and accommodation, but also because of the severing of daily interaction with their parents. As Sossian also notes, day school students enjoy academic and emotional support from their parents, thereby enhancing their learning experiences. He justifiably dismisses the popular belief that disturbances in boarding schools are due to pressure occasioned by the need to cover the syllabus in time: “… students in boarding schools cover exactly the same content as those in day schools. So, why are there no arson cases, walkouts, sit-ins and breakages in day schools? The truth of the matter is that majority of our children abhor boarding schools.”

Questions and answers

A number of objections can be raised against the position I have articulated above on at least five counts.

Why rob children of the opportunity to learn independence and networking in boarding schools?

Many boarding school graduates, myself included, will tell you that they learned vital lessons of independent living in boarding schools, and made lifelong friendships there. However, lessons on independent living and the building of “social capital” need not be traumatic, yet boarding schools quite often make them so. For example, a five-year-old sent off to boarding school still needs daily parental love and protection. Without it, the pupil quickly learns to succumb to paralysing fear, or learns inordinate aggression. Similarly, an adolescent going through puberty needs parental guidance to learn how to cope with the changes in their body, but being thrust into a boarding school leads the student to imbibe a host of false beliefs about sexuality from peers. Day scholars learn independent living through interaction with their peers in school and in their neighbourhoods, but what they learn is moderated by their parents. Most sobering is the fact that children who spend only three out of twelve months with their parents because they attend boarding school are in real danger of being estranged from them.

Have boarding school graduates not succeeded in their careers?

Graduates of both day and boarding schools have successfully pursued their careers, so there is no advantage of boarding schools over day schools in this regard. Nevertheless, some boarding-school graduates who are successful in their careers have deep-seated social and psychological problems as a result of their time in those schools. A number of them of my generation indicate that they got “hooked” to smoking in lower boarding secondary schools because of peer pressure. Others suffer trauma from having been bullied and/or sexually abused in such institutions. Besides, a thriving career can never wipe away the pain of growing up without daily parental love and care.

Are all aspects of life not risky?

A colleague recently pointed out to me that there are many risks in life. In particular, they pointed out that buses and other modes of motorised transport get involved in accidents, but we do not stop using them, so why abolish boarding schools? I replied that this is an inadequate comparison because I have never heard of bus drivers conniving to set off a series of accidents, but we have witnessed a spate of seasonal school fires around the country indicating that many, if not all of them, were deliberately started. For example, the National Crime Research Centre reports that in 2016 alone, there were over 130 cases of arson in schools related to student unrest. Besides, according to The Star, 63 arson cases targeting dormitories and administration blocks were reported over a span of two months in 2018; according to a study by University of Nairobi’s Isaac Muasya, arson is the leading cause of school fires. Why then hang on to boarding schools?

Is it realistic to plan for high-quality education in every neighbourhood?

This country has all the resources it needs to provide high quality public services such as education, health care and security. However, misplaced priorities – such as inordinately high salaries for holders of high political office and outright misappropriation of public funds – continue to reduce the aspiration for such services to mere pipe dreams. This is how we end up with many jobless qualified teachers and poorly staffed, poorly equipped, overcrowded schools. Besides, in view of the many dormitories in boarding schools that could be converted into classrooms and offices, the need for new buildings is not as big as it may seem. Thus, while some neighbourhoods will require heavy investments in terms of school infrastructure, others will need very little to none.

How about learners from dysfunctional families who benefit from being away in boarding school?

It is a fact that the number of dysfunctional families in our society is rising significantly – families experiencing domestic violence, alcoholism, the pain of divorce or separation, among others. Children from such families find solace in boarding schools – places where they can be “away from it all”. However, public education policy ought to take care of both the majority and the minority. To do so, it does not necessarily place the majority in situations that inconvenience them simply for the sake of the vulnerable minority. To be specific, let children from functional families enjoy their homes while putting in place interventions for those whose families are dysfunctional.

Are boarding schools not catalysts of nation-building?

As I pointed out elsewhere, post-colonial polities in Africa are states (entities exercising sovereignty over specific territories) but not nations (people with shared histories that motivate them to desire to govern themselves while excluding those who do not share those histories). These states, most of which are comprised of peoples from highly diverse cultures, are the direct result of the Western imperialist partition of Africa in Berlin in 1884. Consequently, to uncritically accept that Kenya is a nation which boarding schools should build is not only self-contradictory, but it is also to endorse the Western imperialist partition of Africa the way the Organisation of African Union did when, in 1963, it resolved to leave colonial borders intact. Regarding this point, Kalundi Serumaga writes:

“Why are there only a handful of contemporary states in Africa whose names bear a relation to the identity of people actually living there. Everyplace else is a reference to a commodity, or an explorer’s navigational landmarks.

This frankly malevolent labelling offers the space for the linguistic demotion of entire peoples. To wit: 34 million Oromo, seven million Baganda, 43 million Igbo, 10 million Zulu will always remain ‘ethnicities’ and ‘tribes’ to be chaperoned by ‘whiteness’. 5.77 million Danes, 5.5 million Finns, and just 300,000 Icelanders can be called ‘nations’, complete with their own states with seats at the UN.”

Furthermore, as I have illustrated in my paper cited above, the conflation of “nationhood” and “statehood” facilitates the marginalisation of communities that do not enjoy political power. When they protest against the fact that their regions are neglected in the distribution of resources, or that none of their own are appointed to public office, they are told that all appointees are Kenyans, with the insinuation that it is they who are playing destructive “ethnic” politics.

To be sure, interaction among people from diverse cultural backgrounds is enriching, and it is already happening in our urban neighbourhoods and even rural villages. Nevertheless, forcing learners into boarding schools in the name of “nation-building” is a perpetuation of colonial violence, is in fact child sacrifice on the altar of a mythical “nationhood”, and is reminiscent of the boarding schools set up by Western satellites in America, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia to assimilate indigenous peoples into the invading dominant “white” culture. What we need is to work towards intercultural justice so as to build a strong multicultural state.

Which way forward?

It cannot be denied that we tend to think that when something has been done a certain way for long, it cannot be done any other way. Nevertheless, we ought never to assume that what is and what ought to be are one and the same thing. More specifically, it is erroneous to assume that since we have had boarding schools from the inception of Western-type formal education, then we must continue to have them in perpetuity regardless of their negative impact on the lives of learners and society at large. To hold on to such a conservative view is to surrender to our current sorry state, and thereby to shirk our responsibility to “dream” and plan for better days ahead.

In December 2022, the Principal Secretary for Basic Education, Belio Kipsang, announced that the government would abolish boarding schools for all pupils from Grades 1 to 9 from January 2023, with pupils transitioning to Junior Secondary Schools joining day schools in their home areas. Said Kipsang, “We must create a way in which we can be with our children and the only way is through day schooling.” Let the government be resolute but also planful in implementing the policy of abolishing boarding schools in a way that secures and promotes the welfare of all learners in the country. Suddenly abolishing boarding schools as it did without ensuring the provision of high quality day schools in every neighbourhood can only further entrench the inequality for which Kenya has been well known from the days of classical British colonialism.