The Oprah Winfrey academy in South Africa is preparing for a major transformation after nearly two decades of educating academically gifted girls, but the change does not mean the education mission behind the school is disappearing.
Winfrey announced Wednesday, July 29, that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will conclude operations in its current form at the end of 2027. The school is expected to graduate two more classes before the existing model ends.
“The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women,” Winfrey said in the statement announcing the transition.
Rather than continuing to center the program around one residential academy, Winfrey plans to move toward an “expanded” scholarship model supporting students at other schools throughout South Africa. The provincial government will take over the facility and continue operating it as a school once Winfrey’s current program concludes there.
Students still enrolled when the transition takes place “will go to other top-tier schools with their tuition paid for in total by Ms. Winfrey through their graduation.”
That distinction makes this bigger than a celebrity school closing its doors. Winfrey is changing how her education funding reaches students while the physical campus remains part of South Africa’s education system.
Her connection to the project goes back more than two decades. The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation says the idea took shape during a 2002 conversation between Winfrey and Nelson Mandela about poverty and the role education could play in creating opportunity. Winfrey told Mandela that she wanted to build a school for girls in South Africa, and the academy opened five years later.
Nearly 3,000 girls applied for the academy’s original class, with 152 students selected. The school was designed around access to an elite education for girls coming from economically disadvantaged circumstances.
The academy’s current mission, published by OWLAG, describes the school as a nurturing environment for academically gifted girls from disadvantaged backgrounds in Grades 8 through 12 who demonstrate academic talent and leadership potential.
Winfrey also invested heavily in building that environment. CBS News reported that the school cost about $40 million to build. The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation describes a campus that included classrooms, laboratories, a library, theater and residential facilities.
The Oprah Winfrey academy faced one of its most difficult chapters shortly after opening. A former dormitory matron was accused of physically and sexually abusing students. Tiny Virginia Makopo faced 14 assault charges and was acquitted in 2010.
Winfrey later described the ordeal as “devastating.” Despite that early controversy, the academy continued educating young women “from disadvantaged communities across South Africa.”
By January 2012, the school had reached a defining milestone. CBS News reported that its first graduating class included 72 students and that all 72 were headed to college, with some preparing to attend universities in the United States.
The numbers continued growing from there. More than 1,000 girls have graduated from the academy since its 2007 opening. A study cited in a release provided to the outlet found that almost all surveyed graduates pursued higher education and “reported that their education positively transformed their families.”
Those results are now central to Winfrey’s decision to expand beyond the Oprah Winfrey academy campus.
Under the scholarship model, “overall, there will be double the amount of girls who will have access to education through this model.”
“That is the core of the decision to shift to this new model after seeing the success of the students the past 20 years,” the representative said.
The academy property will be returned to the Gauteng Department of Education after the 2027 academic year under the original partnership arrangement. The next phase will then focus on scholarships supporting young women at leading schools across the country.
Winfrey made clear that leaving the campus model behind does not mean walking away from the girls the program was created to serve.
Her mission, she said, “doesn’t end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education.”
“I’m excited that this next chapter will allow us to reach even more young women across South Africa and continue the promise that began more than 20 years ago,” Winfrey added.
The transition also puts one of Winfrey’s most personal philanthropic projects into a new phase. In 2019, she told PEOPLE, “This school is my greatest legacy.”
“These girls are my deepest, greatest joy.”
After two decades of building that legacy around one institution, Winfrey is betting that its next chapter can make the circle even wider.
