- Sister Caroline Onyango has taken over as Principal of Asumbi Girls National School following the retirement of Chief Principal Linet Pino Sati.
- Mrs Sati has left a strong legacy, including infrastructure expansion and a 2025 KCSE mean score of 9.784 with 100 per cent university transition.
- The official handover ceremony has been scheduled for September 30
Sister Caroline Onyango is now the new Principal of Asumbi Girls National School after Chief Principal Linet Pino Sati retired from headship upon attaining her mandatory retirement age. The official retirement celebration and handover is expected to take place on the 30th of this month.
Sister Onyango was the deputy of the school before succeeding her boss. Teachers who talked to Education News expressed confidence in the success of the incoming Principal, noting that she is familiar with the school setting, having helped run it alongside her predecessor for several years.
Asumbi Girls is one of Kenya’s top national girls boarding schools, located a few kilometres from Homa Bay Town in Rangwe Sub-County, Homa Bay County. It occupies 20 acres of land. The school was officially founded on March 19, 1936, by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of St Joseph and sponsored by the Mill Hill Missionaries under the Catholic Diocese of Homa Bay. It started as a small missionary centre and has grown into an academic giant in Nyanza.
Currently, the school has a population of over 1,800 students with eight streams per class from Form One to Form Four. It has over 85 TSC teachers, plus more than 30 Board of Management teachers and support staff. It is a Cluster One national school under the Ministry of Education fee guidelines, with an annual fee cap of about Sh75,798. It is known for discipline, strong Catholic values and its annual Cultural Day, which draws thousands from across the county.
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Mrs Linet Pino Sati took over from Sr Josephine Opiyo in 2014 and became the first lay Principal in the school’s history, following a long line of Sisters, including Sr Barbara Okumu and Sr Josephine Opiyo. Under her eleven-year leadership, she expanded infrastructure with new dormitories, modern laboratories, classrooms and a dining hall to accommodate the 100 per cent transition double intake. She also stabilised academic performance and kept Asumbi among the top ten national girls’ schools, improved boarding welfare and the reliability of water and electricity, and strengthened the Guidance and Counselling and Pastoral Programme. She was awarded the OGW for her distinguished service in education.
In the 2024 KCSE, Asumbi presented 752 candidates and posted a mean score of 9.134 with a mean grade of B plain, a significant improvement from 8.3635 in 2023. Ninety-eight per cent attained the minimum university entry grade. The grade distribution was 7 As, 70 A-minus, 219 B-plus, 254 B plain, 136 B-minus, 56 C-plus, 9 C plain, 1 C-minus and 1 D-plus. In the just-released 2025 KCSE results, where Asumbi presented 914 candidates, the school attained a mean score of 9.784 and a 100 per cent university transition, with all candidates scoring C-plus and above, including 9 As, 178 A-minus and 396 B-plus. Principal Sati credited the results to teamwork among teachers, parents and students.
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Sister Caroline Onyango is now expected to build on that legacy. She has pledged to maintain discipline, Catholic ethos and academic excellence ahead of the September 30 ceremony, which will be attended by the Catholic Diocese of Homa Bay, the Board of Management, parents, alumni and county education officials.
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