Education in Colonial Kenya

I grew up in colonial Kenya, living there from 1949 to 1962 — from the age of three to sixteen. Kenya was then under British rule, one of the many colonies that made up the British Empire. At that age, I was far too young to understand the full impact of the colonial system on everyday life. I simply accepted the world around me as the way things were.

Looking back now, I realize just how deeply segregation was woven into it. Education, housing, social interaction, and many other aspects of daily life were organized, to varying degrees, along racial lines.

My focus here is on education.

Some of what I learned while researching this piece surprised me. I came across incidents dating back to 1929, long before I was born, and another from 1954 that I actually remember quite vividly, although I was only eight years old at the time. That 1954 incident concerns a strike by teachers and students in Mombasa. I have a distinct recollection of it, although at the time I obviously had no understanding of the larger issues behind it. Only many years later did I begin to appreciate what may have been taking place around me.

Allidina Visram High School — 1929

One of the incidents I came across occurred in May 1929 at Allidina Visram High School in Mombasa. Approximately sixty students reportedly wrote a letter demanding the removal of the school’s European principal, Captain E. R. St. A. Davies, whom they accused of racial prejudice.

What struck me was not simply that students had protested against their principal. It was who the principal was, and what he represented.

Captain Eric Reginald St. Aubrey Davies was only about twenty-three years old when he was appointed to head the school. He had entered the colonial administration as a District Officer in Kenya in 1928, and his appointment at Allidina Visram came very early in his career. He was not primarily an educator in the conventional sense — he was a young colonial administrator. That distinction matters.

Allidina Visram was an Indian school in Mombasa, serving a community that had helped establish and support its own educational institutions. Yet the school was headed by a young European colonial officer. The students’ protest, then, was about more than the personality of one principal. It was a challenge to a system in which authority was overwhelmingly in European hands.

What is particularly interesting is what happened to Davies afterward. The 1929 protest did not derail his career — quite the opposite. He went on to hold increasingly senior positions in the colonial administration, eventually becoming Chief Native Commissioner of Kenya in 1950, one of the most powerful positions in the colonial government. He was also involved in the administration of African affairs during the Mau Mau Emergency.

Looking back from today, the 1929 incident takes on a significance I could never have appreciated as a child. Those sixty students were not simply objecting to an unpopular principal. They were, perhaps without fully realizing it themselves, challenging a racial hierarchy in which Europeans occupied positions of authority over Africans and Asians.

Education was not the same for everyone

The education system in colonial Kenya reflected the broader racial structure of society. There were essentially separate arrangements for Europeans, Asians, and Africans, and the quality, purpose, and opportunities attached to education differed according to which community you belonged to.

European schools were the most privileged. Asian schools occupied a middle position. African education was generally given fewer resources and was oriented more heavily toward vocational and practical training.

The distinction was not merely about separate schools. It extended to curriculum, government funding, opportunities for advancement, and — importantly — who was allowed to occupy positions of authority.

There was also a significant disparity in how teachers were treated. European teachers received substantially better compensation and benefits than their Asian counterparts — not just in salary, but in housing, overseas allowances, and paid leave. A European teacher recruited from Britain could receive benefits designed to compensate for serving overseas, including paid passages home and housing assistance. Asian teachers, despite sometimes having considerable experience and high academic qualifications, did not receive equivalent treatment.

There is one example of this inequality in my own family that I remember particularly well.

My father had decades of teaching experience and held a master’s degree, but for many years he was not given the designation of “Education Officer.” As I understand it, that designation carried a higher salary, and perhaps other benefits as well.

What makes this particularly striking to me is what happened with my brother George. George returned from England in 1961, at the age of twenty-one, after completing his Bachelor’s degree in Economics. He had no teaching experience. Yet when he took up his position as a teacher, he was given the designation of Education Officer from day one.

My father, with his decades of experience and his master’s degree, had never received that designation. In fact, he was finally given it literally a few months before George arrived.

I cannot know for certain what went through my father’s mind at the time, but the contrast has always stayed with me. It was difficult to explain it simply in terms of qualifications or experience. The difference was that George had come back from England with a degree from a British university.

The result was a system in which a teacher’s race and background could shape not only compensation, but professional status and opportunities for advancement.

There was also a ceiling on advancement. Senior positions in some of the leading schools remained disproportionately in European hands. That a young European colonial officer could be placed in charge of a prominent Indian school, despite the presence of experienced Indian educators, illustrates how the system operated.

It is difficult for me now to look at this history without seeing the connection between these arrangements and the resentment that eventually surfaced in places like Mombasa.

The 1954 school strike

And then we come to 1954. This is where history becomes personal for me.

I was eight years old and living in Mombasa. I remember a great deal of disturbance surrounding the schools, and my parents, along with other Asian teachers, being vocal about the situation. At the time, I had no understanding of colonial policy, racial discrimination, or the politics of education. I simply knew that something unusual was happening.

The issue was a decision by the colonial Education Department to change the traditional school timetable. For many years, schools serving the Indian community in Mombasa had operated on a half-day, single-session basis. In 1954, the authorities decreed that these schools would move to a full-day schedule, including afternoon classes.

On the surface, that might seem like an ordinary administrative decision. In Mombasa it became anything but.

The Indian community had its own reasons for preferring the half-day system. The coastal climate was hot, and the traditional arrangement also allowed children to spend afternoons helping in family businesses or pursuing religious, cultural, and language studies. The community also felt that the government was imposing a major change without adequately considering the circumstances under which these schools operated.

Teachers resisted. Students resisted. Parents and community organizations supported them.

What began as a dispute over school hours developed into a much broader confrontation between the Indian community and the colonial Education Department.

The teachers take a stand

The teachers were at the center of the dispute. Indian teachers who refused to comply with the new full-day timetable faced disciplinary action — suspended, and threatened with the loss of their positions and teaching licenses. Some were fined, penalties that were particularly severe for people whose entire livelihood depended on their teaching careers.

I also recall one teacher who was, rightly or wrongly, accused of being one of the ringleaders. He was asthmatic, but was transferred to a town entirely unsuitable for his health.

The authorities apparently regarded the teachers’ refusal not as a legitimate disagreement over education policy, but as an act of insubordination.

Students joined the protest by refusing to attend the newly introduced afternoon sessions. Parents supported them by keeping their children home. The result was a community-wide confrontation.

What makes the episode particularly interesting to me is the solidarity involved. Teachers, students, and parents — people who normally occupied very different positions in the educational system — were effectively acting together. The issue was no longer simply whether school should run for half a day or a full day. It had become a question of who had the right to decide how the community’s children would be educated.

The government’s response

The colonial authorities responded firmly. The Education Department moved against teachers who refused to comply — headteachers and others were prosecuted and fined, with particularly heavy fines for those in senior positions. Teachers also faced suspension and the threat of losing their professional licenses.

The person at the center of the Education Department at the time was W. J. D. Wadley, the colonial Director of Education.

The dispute occurred during the Mau Mau Emergency, when the colonial government was already extremely sensitive to any form of organized resistance. That broader political environment undoubtedly added to the seriousness with which the authorities viewed the school dispute.

The government’s position appears to have been that teachers employed in the colonial education system were expected to follow official instructions. The teachers, on the other hand, apparently believed they were being asked to accept an unreasonable change, imposed without sufficient regard for the circumstances of their schools and communities. It was a fundamental clash between administrative authority and community resistance.

Looking back

What I find most interesting about all this is that, as a child, I saw only the surface of what was happening.

I remember the 1954 school strike. I did not understand why the teachers were angry. I did not understand the significance of the colonial government. I certainly did not understand that there was a much larger history behind the dispute — one that included racial segregation, unequal treatment of teachers, and restrictions on the educational opportunities available to different communities.

I suspect my parents were not at the heart of the protests. Knowing my father, he would never have been at the forefront of challenging the authorities.

I do recall, though, that years later — probably around 1960 or 1961 — my father mentioned a specific teacher who had taught me and been kindly disposed toward me. I don’t remember the exact context, but when I spoke very warmly about this teacher, my father, perhaps wanting to offer some balance, told me that this man had been praised by the British authorities in front of all the other teachers for his exemplary cooperation. He then said, in effect, that I could imagine what role this teacher must have played in undermining the others.

This was not typical of my father. He was a restrained man who did not readily make accusations about people. So I must have struck a raw nerve when I praised this particular teacher. It is interesting to me now that I remember the conversation at all. At the time, I had no idea what my father was really saying — I simply accepted his comment. Only much later did I begin to understand its significance.

It is only now, more than seventy years later, that I am able to put some of those childhood memories into their historical context.

The incident of 1929 at Allidina Visram High School is particularly revealing. Twenty-five years before the strike I remember, students were already challenging the authority of a European principal they believed treated them unfairly. By 1954, the challenge had grown much broader — teachers, students, and parents were prepared to stand together against the colonial Education Department. And just a few years later, the entire colonial system would begin to unravel. Kenya became independent in 1963.

When I think back to the Kenya of my childhood, I realize I was living through the final years of a system that had existed for decades. At the time, it simply seemed to me that this was the way Kenya was. Only with the benefit of age — and, in this case, a little research — do I appreciate how unusual that world really was.

I left Kenya for England in 1962, at the age of sixteen. I was fortunate to experience the last years of colonial Kenya as a child, and to leave just before independence.

I did not know it then, but I had been living through history.