Madaraka Comprehensive School Lang'ata · Nairobi Enrol a child
Pupils in maroon jumpers holding hands in a wide circle on the school lawn, with the classroom blocks behind them.

Our school

Builtin1973,alongsidetheestate.

Madaraka Comprehensive School is a public day school on Keri Road. It was built in 1973, in the same years as the estate around it, and it has been teaching ever since.

The plain facts

What kind of school this is.

Madaraka Comprehensive School is a public school: registered with the Ministry of Education and teaching Grade 1 to Grade 9 on one compound.

Public

A government school, registered with the Ministry of Education and sponsored by the central government through the District Education Board.

Mixed, and day only

Boys and girls in the same classrooms. There is no boarding — every learner goes home at the end of the day.

Free

There is no tuition fee and no fee structure. Free primary education is national policy and this school runs on it.

An examination centre

Registered to run national assessments, so our learners sit them here rather than travelling to another school.

How we got here

Fifty years on the same ground.

  • 1973

    Madaraka Estate opens on 1 June — Madaraka Day — built by the City Council of Nairobi on forty-five acres off Lang'ata Road, with a loan from the National Housing Corporation. Six hundred families move in.

  • The 1970s

    The school goes up in the same years: a two-storey concrete block under iron sheets, on Keri Road, in the middle of the estate. Classes are added in stages, Standard 1 through to Standard 7, and lunch is the Mburuga, the free meal from the municipality.

  • 1983–1985

    The school's last Certificate of Primary Education class sits the old examination in 1983. Two years later the 8-4-4 syllabus begins, and the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education takes its place.

  • 1988

    A permanent kitchen block is built. The school has fed children since the 1970s — the municipal Mburuga first, then Nyayo milk through the 1980s — and from this year it cooks in a kitchen of its own.

  • 1995–2003

    The school grows to eight streams — eight classes in a year group — alongside a hard push on the academic side.

  • 2006

    Music and the arts are rebuilt at the school, and Madaraka goes to the national finals at Kisumu.

  • 2015

    Madaraka heads the schedule of schools joined to KENET's Nairobi Schools Fibre Connectivity Project — the first name on the list.

  • 2019

    Renovation works run through the constituency development fund, announced by the sitting Member of Parliament for Lang'ata.

  • 2023

    Junior school arrives. Grade 7 enters primary schools across the country, and Kenyan primaries become nine-year schools.

  • 2024

    A full renovation and a new administration block, again through the constituency fund and again announced publicly by the sitting MP.

  • 2026

    The first Competency-Based cohort leaves junior school for senior school, and the old 8-4-4 examination is behind us for good.

A boy and a girl in Madaraka's primary uniform standing in a classroom doorway with teal-green frames, smiling.
At the classroom door
1970sBuilt with the estate

Who has run the school

Eleven head teachers since 1973.

Eleven people have run this school since it opened. Three of them held it for eight years or more, and the longest served fifteen. The years below are printed as the school's own record has them.

  1. 1973–1978
    Mrs Ndeda

    The first head teacher. Classes were added in stages, Standard 1 through to Standard 7, and lunch was the Mburuga, the free meal from the municipality.

  2. 1979–1982
    Mrs Obonyo

    The estate was still filling up around the school, and the full primary course settled into place.

  3. 1983–1985
    Mr Nyutu

    The school's last Certificate of Primary Education class sat under him, and the change to the 8-4-4 syllabus began in 1985.

  4. 1985–1987
    Mr Kinyua

    The early 8-4-4 years. The school's second and third groups of candidates sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education in 1987.

  5. 1987–1995
    Mrs Kihanya

    The longest tenure of the change years: the Class of 1988 left the school, and the permanent kitchen was built.

  6. 1995–2003
    Mrs Mutuku

    Remembered for a strict school and a hard academic push, and the years in which Madaraka grew to eight streams.

  7. 2003–2008
    Mrs Munene

    Music and the arts were rebuilt, and in 2006 the school went to the national finals at Kisumu.

  8. 2008–2023
    Mrs Rose Murimi

    Fifteen years as head teacher and nineteen in the school altogether — senior teacher, then deputy, then head — until she retired in March 2023.

  9. 2023–2025
    Dr Jedidah Ouma

    The buildings and the way the school teaches were brought up to date in her two years. She left the school in July 2025.

  10. 2025–2026
    Madam Victoria

    She held the school between two headships, and retired in February 2026.

  11. 2026 to today
    Madam Teresia Atieno

    The current head teacher, taking the school through its change into a comprehensive school — primary and junior school together.

Confirm. This chronology was put together from the school's records and from former pupils who were here, so a few of the handover years overlap. The office is asked to check the years against the school's own files, and to give the full name of the head the record carries by one name only.

Cultural Day

The whole school, round the edge of the quadrangle.

Cultural Day is held in the quadrangle, on the paving in front of the classroom blocks. The school sits and stands round the edge of it to watch, and the teachers, the parents and the guests dance as well.

Pupils in red tops and wrapped red, black and white skirts dancing in a line on the school paving, fists raised mid-step, their faces painted with white dots.
Dancing in a line
Pupils performing together, one carrying a tall hide drum on a shoulder strap and striking it with a stick, another in a red and blue checked shuka and a white headdress, in front of the school's painted map of Africa.
The drum on its strap
A close row of pupils in red, their cheeks and foreheads painted with white dots, with a woman in a wide black hat standing among them.
Painted for the day
A group of pupils standing together in wrapped cloths over their everyday clothes, with more children crouching in front of them, all facing the camera.
Dressed for the day
A line of pupils in wrapped cloths facing a teacher in a long gold robe, with the school's wall displays behind them.
Waiting to go on
Teachers, parents and guests in kanga and kitenge singing and moving together along the school walkway.
The parents join in

A hide drum is carried on a strap and played with sticks. The dancers wear shuka, beaded collars and bracelets, one of them in a headdress of ostrich feathers. Pupils in red tops and wrapped skirts dance in a line, their faces painted for the day. Parents, teachers and guests dance in kanga and kitenge and in headwraps.

Music and dance have a long record at this school. A teacher of this school sang with the Nyayo Mass Choir, and in 2006 the school's music and arts went to the national finals at Kisumu.

The photographs on this page were made from the school's own recording of the day. As everywhere on this site, the children in them are not pupils of this school.

Pupils in maroon jumpers seated at wooden desks, listening during a lesson.
A lesson in progress

The staff

Trained, registered, and accountable.

Every teacher here is trained and employed by the Teachers Service Commission — the national body that registers, posts and pays Kenya's teachers. It means a qualified professional in front of every class and a national standard behind every one of them.

The school is run with a Board of Management and an active parents' association. Both are how a public school is actually governed: the Board carries the school's decisions and the parents' association carries the parents' voice into them.

What guides us

Our motto, vision and mission.

A school is run by what it says about itself and then does. These are the three statements Madaraka Comprehensive School is run by, and the ones a family is welcome to hold us to.

01

Our motto

We do our best and God does the rest.

02

Our vision

To provide an independent, well-disciplined and knowledgeable child for the future.

03

Our mission

To provide a challenging experience which will enable our pupils to become responsible, successful citizens in the future.

Where we sit

Two minutes from the roundabout, and the whole city behind it.

Madaraka Estate sits about five kilometres from the city centre, on Lang'ata Road, with Nyayo National Stadium at one end and Nairobi West at the other. Strathmore University is on Ole Sangale Road, two streets away. The children who walk to this school walk past a university on the way.

We are on Keri Road, inside the estate rather than on the highway — which is the right side of the traffic for a school.

Find us on the map
Smiling pupils in maroon jumpers close together outside the school.
Break time

Ask the school

Anything here you would rather just ask?

The assistant answers from the school's own records, and takes your number for the office when it cannot help.