Oprah Winfrey says she will close her school for girls in South Africa next year

Oprah Win­frey says she will close the school for un­der­priv­i­leged girls she set up in South Africa two decades ago at the end of next year.

Win­frey opened the Oprah Win­frey Lead­er­ship Acad­e­my for Girls in 2007 af­ter be­ing in­spired by con­ver­sa­tions with for­mer South African Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela about the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of ed­u­cat­ing girls. He was among the guests at the school’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

Win­frey’s char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion ran and fund­ed the school, but it was al­ways part of the agree­ment that the acad­e­my cam­pus near Jo­han­nes­burg be ul­ti­mate­ly hand­ed over to the provin­cial ed­u­ca­tion de­part­ment, the acad­e­my said.

“The dream was nev­er sim­ply to build a school,” Win­frey said in a state­ment is­sued by the acad­e­my on Wednes­day. “It was to in­vest in the lim­it­less po­ten­tial of young women. That mis­sion doesn’t end with one cam­pus. It con­tin­ues in every girl whose fu­ture can be trans­formed through ed­u­ca­tion.”

The acad­e­my said Win­frey’s com­mit­ment to ed­u­cat­ing South African girls would con­tin­ue through an ex­pand­ed na­tion­al schol­ar­ship pro­gram sup­port­ing aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly tal­ent­ed girls at lead­ing schools across the coun­try.

More than 500 girls have grad­u­at­ed from the acad­e­my and some have at­tend­ed top uni­ver­si­ties in South Africa, the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope, ac­cord­ing to the Oprah Win­frey Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion.

The Gaut­eng provin­cial gov­ern­ment will take over the 52-acre acad­e­my cam­pus, which has 21 class­rooms, six sci­ence and com­put­er lab­o­ra­to­ries, a 10,000-vol­ume li­brary and a 600-seat the­ater. It did not im­me­di­ate­ly say what the plans for the prop­er­ty were.

Gaut­eng Provin­cial Min­is­ter for Ed­u­ca­tion Lebo­gang Maile said those cur­rent­ly en­rolled in the school will be able to com­plete their ed­u­ca­tion with un­in­ter­rupt­ed fi­nan­cial sup­port.

The acad­e­my drew in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion short­ly af­ter open­ing in 2007 when sev­er­al stu­dents ac­cused a dor­mi­to­ry ma­tron of phys­i­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly abus­ing them.

Win­frey trav­eled to South Africa to meet with stu­dents and par­ents, pub­licly apol­o­gized, and com­mis­sioned an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The ma­tron was ac­quit­ted of crim­i­nal charges in 2010.