Butere Girls High School is a girls only public boarding secondary school in Butere,

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History

Butere Girls High School grew out of a primary school founded by the Irish missionary Jane Elizabeth Chadwick, who arrived in Butere in 1916 and taught there until 1925, when she returned to Ireland. Some of Chadwick's manuscript memories of her early students have been anthologized. The school became a full day school in 1931 and then a boarding school in 1937.Raisa Okwaras
Butere Girls’ High School KCSE results
''Jambo News'', 17 December 2019. Accessed 9 January 2021. The future archbishop

Festo Olang' Festo Habakkuk Olang’,was born in Ebusakami Esabalu village about 1914 In 1925 he began attending Kisumu Primary School, then called Komulo School. In 1927, he sat for the Common Entrance Examination at Maseno School and was admitted in 1928. He s ...

taught at Butere in the early 1940s. In 1957 it became a secondary school. At that time the school was regarded as a leading Protestant girls’ high school, ranked second in Kenya after

Alliance Girls High School Alliance Girls' High School (AGHS) is a public national boarding school for girls located near the small town of Kikuyu in the Kiambu District of the Central Province of Kenya, 20 km from Nairobi. Founded in 1948 as the African Girls High S ...

.Sara Brenda Khanani
The role of the church missionary society in the development of girls’ education in Western Kenya: the case of Butere girls high school, 1957 – 2007
M.Ed. thesis, University of Nairobi, 2015. In 1970 it admitted its first

A level The A-Level (Advanced Level) is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational aut ...

class. After facing infrastructure, management and discipline problems in the 1980s its academic performance deteriorated. However, its performance recovered and in 2012 the school was promoted to national school category. In 2013 the school presented a controversial play, ''Shackles of Doom'', by the playwright and future senator

Cleophas Malala Cleophas Wakhungu Malalah is a Kenyan politician. He is the immediate former senator of Kakamega County. Early life and education Cleophas Wakhungu Malalah sat for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education at Friends school Kamusinga bef ...

. The play, which addressed the issues of

ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

, tribalism and inequality in Kenya, was banned by the Ministry of Education, though the ban was later lifted by the High Court. In 2018 the school's performance of another play by Mabala, ''It is Well'', earned them first place at Western Region Drama Festival. In 2016 the principal, Dorah Okalo, was removed from office after pressure from the Bishop of Butere. In February 2019 a Form Three student committed suicide at the school.

Notable alumni

* Joyce Aluoch, lawyer. * Amina Mohamed, politician. * Grace Ogot, writer and politician. * Janet Okello, rugby player. *

Effie Owuor Effie Owuor (born 1943) is a Kenyan lawyer and judge who was the country's first female State Counsel, Magistrate, High Court (Kenya), High Court Judge, and Court of Appeal of Kenya, Court of Appeal Judge. Early life and education Owuor was born ...

, judge. * Rachel Ruto, second and later first lady of Kenya.

References

{{coord missing, Kenya Educational institutions established in 1916 1916 establishments in Kenya Girls' schools in Kenya Boarding schools in Kenya High schools and secondary schools in Kenya Kakamega County