It’s time to reconsider boarding schools in Kenya

The recent fire tragedy at Utumishi Secondary School in Gilgil, which claimed the lives of 16 learners and left several others seriously injured, has once again reopened a painful national conversation. It forces us to pose a difficult question: should Kenya continue maintaining boarding schools in their current form, or is it time to abolish or fundamentally re-evaluate their usefulness?

Boarding schools were shaped in the pre-independence era and later expanded as instruments of access to education, national integration, and academic efficiency.

Over time, they evolved beyond academic institutions into structured environments for discipline, identity formation, and social mobility. For many learners, they provided stability, moral grounding, and exposure that may not have been equally available in home settings.

However, the current crisis is not necessarily that boarding schools are inherently obsolete. It is that the ecosystem supporting them has significantly weakened.

Several structural challenges are now evident.

First, student welfare systems have not evolved at the same pace as changing population pressures and modern social dynamics. Overcrowding, under-staffing, and inadequate psychosocial support have reduced supervision and care within the institutions.

Second, safety infrastructure and enforcement remain erratic. Fire preparedness, emergency response systems, and general infrastructure maintenance in many schools fall below acceptable standards, exposing learners to avoidable risks.

Third, social behaviour patterns among learners have changed. Exposure to digital platforms, peer influence, and evolving family structures have created new realities that older disciplinary models are struggling to manage effectively.

Fourth, parental engagement has, in some cases, been unintentionally weakened by the boarding system itself, creating gaps in continuous moral guidance and emotional support.

Something has indeed shifted. Increasingly, some education institutions are grappling with rising cases of indiscipline, including drug abuse, coordinated unrest, and disruptive behaviour often influenced by a few learners. At the same time, traditional disciplinary frameworks are no longer applied with the same consistency or authority they once were.

This shift is partly a consequence of history. Past abuses of disciplinary authority by some educators led to serious outcomes, including injury and loss of life.

These incidents necessitated stronger safeguards under the law. However, the unintended effect has also been a weakening of structured discipline in some schools, leaving administrators constrained in enforcing order effectively.

Parents have also become central to this evolving dynamic. While their role in safeguarding children is essential, some have increasingly resisted firm corrective measures, thereby weakening the authority structures within schools.

It is, therefore, imperative that government urgently implements all existing audit reports and safety recommendations on schools..

Where institutions fail to meet minimum thresholds, decisive interventions, including temporary closure for inspection, correction, and certification, should be considered.

Beyond physical infrastructure, Kenya must now embrace technology-driven disaster preparedness systems as a core part of school safety.

Modern institutions should be equipped with smart fire detection and alarm systems capable of automatically triggering real-time alerts to nearby fire stations, police units, and emergency response teams using GPS-enabled location systems.

In addition, schools should adopt structured digital safety and intelligence systems that allow early detection of risks such as bullying, drug abuse, radical behaviour shifts, or planned unrest.

These systems, however, must be carefully designed to protect learners’ rights and ensure that whistleblowers are never victimised or exposed. A safe reporting culture—supported by anonymous reporting tools and independent safeguarding officers—should be institutionalized in every school.

Equally urgent is the need to re-audit disciplinary frameworks to ensure they align strictly with the Constitution and legal safeguards, while still restoring order, accountability, and learner discipline.

The current funding model is under strain, particularly under the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). Junior Secondary Schools (JSS), in particular, continue to face serious challenges in infrastructure, staffing, and learning materials, exposing systemic capacity gaps that must be urgently addressed.

Ultimately, political leadership, school boards, and education authorities must treat safety, infrastructure investment, technology integration, and institutional accountability not as secondary concerns but as central pillars of education reform.

Kenya now faces a defining policy choice: to retain, abolish, or radically reform boarding schools. But beyond the debate, one truth remains clear—the system must be urgently re-evaluated and rebuilt to restore safety, discipline, and purpose in equal measure.

The question is no longer whether boarding schools have served Kenya well in the past. The question is whether they are still safe, sustainable, and fit for the future of Kenya’s children today.

Alex Owiti is the founder and chief executive officer of Alexander PR and Communication Network.