Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba has admitted that the Ministry of Education allowed Starehe Boys Centre and Starehe Girls Centre to reject a total of 632 Grade 10 learners who had already been officially placed at the two institutions by the government.
The disclosure comes amid growing outrage from parents whose children were turned away from the prestigious schools or transferred to other institutions without their consent, despite meeting the required academic thresholds.
According to CS Ogamba, the ministry issued placement lists to the two schools, after which the institutions applied their own internal selection criteria and declined to admit hundreds of learners. He said only 81 boys and 61 girls were ultimately accepted after a comparison between the ministry’s placement list and the schools’ admission standards.
“In total, Starehe Boys Centre rejected 317 learners while Starehe Girls Centre declined 315,” CS Ogamba stated.
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The move has raised serious concerns after it emerged that some affected learners were transferred to day schools and lower-ranked institutions, despite having qualified for top-tier C1 schools. In several cases, the transfers were done without formal requests from parents or guardians.
Parents who spoke to the media expressed frustration and confusion over the decisions.
Attempts by parents to seek intervention from the Ministry of Education reportedly yielded little assistance, with officials indicating that Starehe schools operate with autonomy similar to private institutions.
However, Ogamba maintained that all affected learners were placed in their second-choice C1 schools, a claim some parents dispute.
Founded by the late Geoffrey Griffin, who died in 2005, Starehe Boys Centre was once ranked among Kenya’s top national schools and consistently posted outstanding results in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations.
Although both Starehe Boys and Starehe Girls have, in recent years, slipped from their former dominance, occasionally ranking outside the national top ten, they continue to be regarded as high-performing institutions, making the mass rejection of learners a matter of national concern.
By Mercy Kokwon
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