Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy to Close, Shift to Scholarships
SOUTH AFRICA · EDUCATION
Key Facts
—The decision: The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will end operations in its current form by late 2027.
—What replaces it: A nationwide scholarship programme intended to fund roughly twice as many girls.
—The last classes: Two more senior years will graduate; younger pupils move to top South African schools with tuition covered through to graduation.
—The campus: The Henley-on-Klip property returns to the Gauteng Department of Education, as the founding agreement required.
—The record: More than 1,000 girls have graduated since 2007, with 870 going on to universities and colleges abroad.
—The origin: The school grew out of a meeting in 2000 between Winfrey and Nelson Mandela about girls’ education.
—The investment: Winfrey put more than US$100 million into the campus, which opened its doors in January 2007.
The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will close in its current form by late 2027, ending two decades of a single boarding school outside Johannesburg. The money moves instead into a national scholarship intended to reach about twice as many South African girls.
What is happening to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy
Winfrey, now 72, has confirmed that the academy will wind down its boarding operation by late 2027. The institution does not disappear so much as change shape.
In its place comes a scholarship fund operating across South Africa rather than on one campus. A representative for Winfrey told PEOPLE that roughly twice as many girls would gain access to education under the new model.
“The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women,” Winfrey said in a statement announcing the change.
Where the current pupils go
Two more senior classes will complete their schooling at the academy through to late 2027. Nobody in those years is being moved.
Girls in the lower grades will transfer to top-tier schools elsewhere in South Africa, with all their tuition covered by Winfrey until they graduate. That commitment is the part that distinguishes this from a closure.
The distinction matters because boarding schools that wind down often leave younger pupils to find their own way. Here the funding follows the child rather than the building.
What happens to the campus
The residential campus at Henley-on-Klip, in Gauteng, returns to the provincial Department of Education. That transfer was written into the partnership agreement signed at the school’s founding.
It is an unusually clean ending for a philanthropic project of this size. The land and buildings go back into the public system rather than being sold.
What the province does with a purpose-built boarding campus is now its decision, and a considerable asset to inherit.
How it started, and what it cost
The idea came out of a meeting in 2000 between Winfrey and Nelson Mandela about the gap facing South African girls in education. By 2002 she was breaking ground at Henley-on-Klip alongside Mandela and the then education minister, Professor Kader Asmal.
Winfrey has said she personally invested more than US$100 million in the campus, which opened in January 2007 for grades eight to twelve. It took pupils from severely disadvantaged backgrounds and boarded them.
Since then more than 1,000 girls have graduated, and 870 have gone on to universities and colleges abroad. The first cohort, in 2012, reached tertiary education in full.
The part of the record that is harder to tell
The academy’s early years included a widely reported abuse case involving a former member of staff. Winfrey apologised publicly, replaced the leadership and strengthened the school’s safeguarding and pastoral systems.
It remains part of the institution’s history and of any honest account of it. The reforms that followed shaped how the school was run for the fifteen years afterwards.
Winfrey has since described the school as her greatest legacy, a claim that will now be measured against a much larger set of students.
The school also sat inside a wider debate about foreign philanthropy in South African education, and whether a single lavishly funded institution can carry a national problem. That argument did not end with the abuse case, and the shift to scholarships answers part of it.
The argument for scholarships over a campus
A boarding school is expensive per pupil and fixed in one place. A scholarship travels, and it uses schools that already exist rather than building new ones.
The trade is real, though. What a campus provides that a bursary cannot is a single environment, sustained over five years, in which every adult is working towards the same thing.
Winfrey’s team has framed the change as a decision taken after seeing two decades of results. Whether doubling the number of funded girls delivers the same outcomes is the question the next ten years will answer.
There is also a practical point for South Africa. Spreading funded pupils across many strong schools puts money into institutions that already work, instead of concentrating it in one place that only a few hundred girls can reach.
Either way, the promise made in 2000 is being kept in a different currency. The commitment is no longer a building outside Johannesburg but a cheque that follows a girl to whichever classroom will take her.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy close?
It will end operations in its current form by late 2027. Two more senior classes will graduate before then.
What happens to the current pupils?
Girls in the lower grades will move to top-tier South African schools, with all of their tuition covered by Winfrey through to graduation. The two remaining senior classes finish at the academy.
What replaces the school?
A nationwide scholarship programme, which a representative for Winfrey says will give roughly twice as many girls access to full educational funding.
Who takes over the campus?
The residential campus at Henley-on-Klip returns to the Gauteng Department of Education. That was written into the original partnership agreement signed when the school was founded.
Connected Coverage
South African education and the pressures on it run through our coverage of the country, including the AI job squeeze threatening 3.3 million South African workers and the social strain we reported in the story of more than 53,000 migrants who have left South Africa. Our wider continental coverage is gathered in Africa: The New Scramble.
Sources: Gauteng Department of Education.
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