On Wednesday, Oprah Winfrey announced that the residential campus of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) in South Africa will end operations in its current form at the close of the 2027 academic year. The headline reads like a shutdown. The details read like a handover — and the difference matters enormously.
The school is not being sold, abandoned, or quietly wound down. The 22-acre campus in Henley-on-Klip returns to the Gauteng Department of Education, which will keep running it as a school. Every current student stays funded through graduation. And in place of one campus serving a few hundred girls, Winfrey is launching an expanded scholarship program that a representative told People will roughly double the number of young women receiving full educational funding.
What Oprah Winfrey Actually Announced
In a statement released Wednesday, Winfrey, 72, confirmed that OWLAG will stop operating as an Oprah-run boarding school after the 2027 school year. The announcement was first detailed by Oprah Daily and quickly picked up by the Associated Press, People, and South African outlets.
The framing from Winfrey's side is consistent: this is a change of model, not a retreat from education. Instead of concentrating resources on a single elite campus, her foundation will fund girls across the whole country.
💡 The detail most coverage buried: handing the campus to the Gauteng Department of Education was not a new decision made this week. It was written into the original partnership agreement signed when the school was founded. This transfer was always the plan — the only news is the timing.
What Happens to the Students Currently Enrolled?
This is the question every parent and alumna asked first, and the answer is unusually clean for a school closure of this size.
That last commitment is what separates this from a typical closure. When boarding schools wind down, younger pupils are usually left to find their own placement and their own funding. Here, the money follows the child rather than the building.
The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women.
My mission doesn't end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education.
— Oprah Winfrey, official statementOne Campus vs. a National Scholarship: The New Model Explained
The strategic logic is straightforward. A single residential campus with grades 8 to 12 can only serve a few hundred girls at a time, and it carries the full cost of buildings, boarding, staff, meals, labs and a wellness centre. A scholarship program removes the infrastructure overhead and spends the same money directly on tuition — at many schools, in many provinces.
- One boarding campus, Henley-on-Klip
- Grades 8–12, a few hundred students
- Tuition-free, fully residential
- High fixed cost per student
- Deep, immersive, but narrow in reach
- Nationwide scholarships, no single campus
- Students placed at top-tier schools
- Full tuition funded through graduation
- No building or boarding overhead
- Reportedly around double the reach
⚠️ Worth noting: the "double the number of girls" figure comes from a representative for Winfrey speaking to People, not from an audited or independently verified program document. Full details of the scholarship — how many places, which schools, how girls apply — have not been published yet.
How It Started: Mandela, a Promise, and a $40 Million Campus
The idea traces back to a meeting between Winfrey and Nelson Mandela at the start of the 2000s. Winfrey has said she told Mandela she wanted to build a school for girls in South Africa; Mandela encouraged the project and stayed personally involved in its development.
The academy opened in January 2007 after roughly six years of planning and a reported $40 million investment. The campus was purpose-built: science and computer laboratories, a library, a wellness centre, and boarding facilities designed for academically talented girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. The first intake accepted 152 girls out of thousands of applicants. Winfrey has said that across the school's lifetime she personally invested hundreds of millions of dollars in it.
Twenty Years in Seven Moments
What South Africa's Education Department Is Saying
The response from the provincial government has been warm rather than defensive. Gauteng Education MEC Lebogang Maile thanked Winfrey for two decades of investment in South African girls' education, and the department's spokesperson confirmed that preparations for the full transfer are already underway, in line with the original partnership agreement.
From the province's perspective, this is a rare outcome: a large, purpose-built boarding campus entering the public system as a functioning asset rather than being sold off. What Gauteng chooses to do with it — who gets admitted, and on what terms — is now a public policy decision.
The Bigger Question: Depth or Reach?
There is a genuine trade-off here, and it deserves to be stated honestly rather than smoothed over.
What OWLAG offered was not only tuition. It was a controlled environment: safe housing, meals, counselling, a wellness centre, mentorship, and a peer group of high-achieving girls from similar backgrounds. For a student coming from a household under real economic strain, that total environment is often the thing that makes academic success possible — not the school fees alone.
A scholarship covers fees. It does not automatically replicate the wraparound support. Whether the new model delivers comparable outcomes at double the volume is the real question — and it is one that will only be answerable in five to ten years, when the first fully scholarship-funded cohorts reach university and the workforce.
The Bottom Line
Oprah Winfrey is not walking away from South African education — she is changing how the money is spent. The campus goes back to the state exactly as the founding agreement stipulated, every current student stays fully funded, and the foundation's resources shift from one building to a nationwide scholarship. The scale-up is promising; the details of the new program have not been published yet. We will update this article as they are.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy closing permanently?
The academy will stop operating in its current form as an Oprah-run boarding school after the 2027 academic year. The campus itself is not shutting down — it transfers to the Gauteng Department of Education, which will continue running it as a school.
When exactly does OWLAG close?
At the close of the 2027 academic year. Two more senior classes will graduate before the transition is completed.
What happens to students who have not graduated yet?
Girls in lower grades will be placed at other top-tier South African schools, with Winfrey covering their tuition in full through to graduation. Academic and financial support continues without interruption during the transition.
Why is Oprah Winfrey closing the school?
To broaden reach. Her team says a nationwide scholarship program can fund roughly double the number of girls compared with running a single residential campus, because the money goes to tuition instead of buildings, boarding and campus operations.
Who takes over the campus?
The Gauteng Department of Education, the provincial education authority. This was written into the original partnership agreement signed when the school was founded, so the handover was always part of the plan.
How many girls graduated from OWLAG?
More than 1,000 students have graduated since the academy opened in January 2007.
How can a student apply for the new scholarship?
Application details have not been released. The scholarship program is expected to begin after current OWLAG students complete their schooling. Official information will come from Winfrey's foundation.
