What sustained public investment, and exceptional schools working within ordinary constraints, can teach us about education reform
A widely shared report from Rwanda offers a provocative starting point for rethinking public education in the region. It describes more than 30 private schools closing or struggling after families shifted towards more affordable public and government-aided schools. The shift was linked to Rwanda’s sustained investment in twelve-year basic education, which expanded school capacity and teaching infrastructure, introduced school feeding and removed fees. The underlying lesson remains relevant to Kenya: when public provision becomes accessible, credible and responsive to families’ needs, it can regain their confidence.
The point is not that public schools must defeat private schools, nor that every Rwandan public school is a model of quality. Rather, the report challenges the assumption that worthwhile learning must be bought privately. It also raises a practical question for Kenya: what can education systems learn from public schools that thrive despite ordinary constraints? This article uses a positive-deviance lens to look at schools where leaders, parents and communities have developed locally grounded models that merit closer study, adaptation and replication, especially if reform is to advance equity.
Positive deviance: excellence from within the system
Positive deviance describes an approach to change that begins by identifying people or institutions that achieve unusually good results despite facing constraints like those around them. Instead of importing an ideal model, reformers study what these outliers already do differently, determine which practices are transferable and help others adapt them.
Kenya’s public education system does not lack schools that can serve as starting points for this inquiry. The schools highlighted here, Moi Primary School in Thika, St Agnes Girls in Kirinyaga, Westlands Primary School in Nairobi and PCEA Ng’enda Primary in Kiambu, are illustrative examples, not an exhaustive list of successful public schools. They operate in different settings, including day, boarding, urban and community-linked models. Their diversity is precisely why they are useful: positive deviance is not a single blueprint, but a disciplined search for effective practices that emerge under different conditions.
These schools should not be read as special cases operating outside the public system. They receive teachers posted by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), operate under the same Ministry of Education policies, circulars and accountability requirements, and serve learners and parents drawn from the same broad population as other public schools. That is precisely what makes them useful as positive-deviance examples: they appear to build stronger cultures, stronger confidence and better local cooperation while working within ordinary public-sector conditions.
Moi Primary School, Thika: making a day-school model work
Moi Primary School offers a useful lens on what quality can look like in a public day school when parents and the surrounding community see the school’s success as their shared responsibility. Because learners return to their families each afternoon, the school cannot rely on the extended structure of a boarding environment. Its strength therefore must come from alignment: teachers maintaining purposeful classroom routines, parents reinforcing attendance and learning habits at home, and community actors helping protect the school as a trusted public asset. This makes Moi Primary especially important for policy learning, because it suggests that a day school can build seriousness, discipline and aspiration when the home–school relationship is active rather than occasional.
The case also illustrates how shared need can unite a community. When families want safe classrooms, consistent teaching, strong performance and credible progression for their children, quality education becomes a collective concern rather than a private purchase. Parents can then help monitor attendance, support school priorities, participate in boards and forums, mobilise local resources and hold both school leadership and public authorities accountable. Community participation is therefore not charity around the school; it is part of the quality system itself.
St Agnes Girls, Kirinyaga: building a culture in a boarding environment
St Agnes Girls presents a contrasting case. As a public girls’ boarding school with a Catholic identity and church-linked tradition, it can shape learners’ academic, social and moral routines throughout the day. The role of the Catholic Church is part of the school’s positive-deviance story. Church involvement can support moral formation, mentorship, pastoral care, disciplined routines, service and a governance ethos that connects the school to a wider faith community. This can help strengthen parents’ trust and sustain a purposeful learning environment, even where public resources are limited.
The policy lesson is not that every school must be church-sponsored. Successful public schools often draw strength from institutions that command community confidence. In the case of St Agnes, the Catholic Church can be examined as a partner that helps organise values, expectations and care around the learner. Researchers should ask which practices – such as mentoring, counselling, leadership formation and community accountability – could be adopted by other schools in secular or multi-faith settings.
Westlands Primary School, Nairobi: public investment matched by local stewardship
Westlands Primary School shows how visible public investment can be reinforced by school-level stewardship. The school has received additional classrooms and has been associated with digital learning infrastructure while serving a large and diverse urban population. Infrastructure alone, however, does not produce learning. The more valuable story lies in how leaders, teachers, boards and families turn facilities into reliable teaching time, safe learning conditions, effective use of technology and accountability for results.
PCEA Ng'enda Primary, Kiambu: community partnership and a competitive public-school model
PCEA Ng’enda Primary, a mixed day and boarding school in Kiambu County, illustrates how a public school can remain open to its community and still thrive. Its experience points to positive deviance rooted in agreement between school leadership and parents: a head teacher and families can jointly shape a model that responds to local expectations and competes credibly with private primary schools. The value of this case lies not only in its structure but also in the relationships, shared accountability and confidence that sustain it. Such locally negotiated models deserve careful documentation and adaptation, particularly where equity is the goal. Public debate should not continue to imply that learning is absent from public schools when examples like this suggest that strong outcomes are possible within the system.
What policymakers can learn
Invest in the basics consistently. Classrooms, sanitation, teachers, meals and learning materials are mutually reinforcing; isolated projects rarely transform a school.
Pair resources with leadership and accountability. Effective schools convert inputs into routines: protected teaching time, use of assessment evidence, teacher support and follow-up on learner attendance.
Study practices, not reputations. A school should be treated as a positive deviant only after its outcomes are verified and the behaviours producing them are documented.
Adapt rather than copy. A boarding school’s evening study programme cannot simply be transferred to a day school, but its mentoring or feedback routines may be adaptable.
Treat parents and communities as quality partners. The strongest public schools do not leave families at the gate; they build routines for communication, shared problem-solving, local resource mobilisation and accountability for attendance, safety and learning.
Make parental engagement a structured part of school improvement. Parents should not only be called upon during crises or fundraising drives. Policymakers should study how strong schools organise regular parental engagement and build it into school improvement practice.
Build reform around shared need. When communities agree that a school must improve because children’s futures depend on it, that need can become a unifying force for action. It can bring together parents, teachers, local leaders and government around practical measures of quality.
A better public debate
The lesson from Rwanda is not that private education has no role. Nor should school closures be celebrated without considering the impact on displaced learners, teachers and local livelihoods. The stronger lesson is that families respond when public systems become accessible, credible and accountable. Public education can regain trust when governments invest for the long term and schools use those investments well.
Kenya should therefore look for excellence already thriving within its public system. Moi Primary, St Agnes Girls, Westlands Primary and PCEA Ng’enda Primary can be examined as potential laboratories of locally generated solutions precisely because they work within ordinary public conditions. Researchers should verify their learning outcomes, identify additional cases, visit classrooms, interview learners and families, and document the repeatable practices that distinguish effective schools from comparable institutions. Replicating the adaptable elements of these models can help strengthen public confidence and advance equity.
The question is no longer whether public schools can succeed. It is whether education systems are willing to notice what their best public schools do differently, and build policy around evidence already hiding in plain sight.
