Troubled press attack school put on spotlight over incidents

St Steven’s Girls High School in Athi River. School is on the spot over a history of students disappearances. [John Muia, Standard]

In July last year, Purity Amina and Diana – then Form Three students at the now infamous St Steven’s Girls High School in Athi River – went missing on a Wednesday evening.

The following morning, Miriam Kivuva, the school principal at the time, made a report at Kyumbi police station about the missing teenagers, whom she said had pending indiscipline cases.

But Purity and Diana’s parents, Eunice Mueni and Jaston Kageya, respectively, had a different story. Alarmed by the reports of disappearance of their daughters from school, they were more agitated after receiving calls from the girls who claimed they had been assaulted and severely injured by one teacher.

Parents’ version

The parents, in the company of a few relatives, stormed the school on Saturday of that week.

Verbal exchanges ensued between them and the school director, Charles Nzeve, before students turned wild and ejected the parents and journalists from the school compound.

One year later, another student disappears from the same institution, this time not for a few days but for a couple of weeks.

The parent’s version of the story is that the 16-year-old Form Two student was sent home over unpaid school fees balance two days after returning from first term’s mid-term break. The school administration disputes the claims, saying the student never reported back after the half term break.

It is perhaps this latest incident, which went viral after the assault on two KTN journalists in the school under the command of the current principal, John Kyalo, that has triggered the Ministry of Education to initiate a closer scrutiny of the institution.

According to some parents who we spoke last Tuesday before the school was temporarily shut down by the ministry officials, the students had been complaining about poor services and facilities.

“My girl has complained about poor diet and lack of clean drinking water. She has also complained about bad condition of pit latrines in the school, some of which she says are without doors,” said one of the parents.

Another parent said he had noticed his daughter’s discipline had deteriorated for the past one and half years she had been in the school.

“I am not sure whether the school is committed to moulding our girls into responsible citizens. The general conduct of my child has been on the downward trend since we brought her here last year,” said the parent.

But Mr Nzeve, the director, blamed the woes facing his school on “the preying eyes of biased media”. He accused journalists of stalking tension in the school by constantly highlighting cases of missing students.

“The media is out to destroy the good name of St Steven’s for reasons best known to them. But my students and I have decided enough is enough,” Nzeve said on Tuesday.