Butere Girls High School is one of the prestigious national schools in the country with an excellent performance history.

Located in Marima, Butere, Kakamega county, the institution is one of the oldest in Western Province and was founded in 1957 by the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S) as part of their missionary work in Northern Kavirondo.

It came into being as a remedy to the unbalanced education between male and female and so there was need for the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S) to establish a girls’ education institution.

This was achieved when Dr. Warren, the Secretary General of C.M.S visited East Africa (Uganda) and asked the leading Africans what help they wished the C.M.S could give to Kenya and the leaders responded that they wished that African girls be better educated.

The African Council of Anglican Church was then asked to select a site and Butere was chosen now that Maseno and Ng’iya were already established by the C.M.S as centers of missionary work.

The other reason why this institution came into being was due to the C.M.S competing with the Catholic in Mumias who had already established a mission and they feared that they would spread out to Butere.

There was the desire to begin a girls’ education institution to the influence of the successful Gayaza in Uganda and of St. Anne’s’ in Ibadan, Nigeria as girl’s institutions.

Chief Mulama of the Nabongo Mumia administration in Butere also made it possible for this institution to start by offering a site for the establishment of a mission station in Butere.

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Butere Girls has since grown to be the only National Girls’ School in Kakamega County. It boasts of prominent alumni including Kenya’s first lady Racheal Ruto.

Other notable figures who studied at Butere girls are Lady Justice Joyce Aluoch, the first Kenyan judge at The Hague; Lady Justice Effie Owuor, Kenya’s first female High Court judge; Mary Okello, Kenya’s first female bank manager and founder of Makini Schools; and Prof Florida Karani, the first woman Chancellor of Maseno University.

Also in the list is former Wiper party presidential running mate, Prof Julia Ojiambo, also the first woman MP from Western Kenya; Elizabeth Masiga, the first woman chief inspector of schools and director of education; and world-renowned research scientist, Prof Norah Olembo.

Performance and school fees

Butere Girls 2024 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results show the institution recorded an 8.711 mean score, with 91.7 percent of the candidates achieving a direct university entry.

Out of the 699 candidates who sat the exam, 4 managed to score a straight A grade while 58 scored an A- grade.

Those who scored B+ were 132 while 238 attained a B. Some 144 students scored a mean grade of B-, 64 had a C+, while 45 had a C plain. The lowest grade was a D+, which was obtained by only three students.

Direct entry to university over  years