The missions had carved out the province amongst themselves in a sort of mini “Berlin Conference”; the Church of Scotland in Kikuyu, the Church Missionary Society in Kabete and parts of Murang’a, the Methodist Church in Meru, Gospel Missionary Society in southern Kiambu, the African Inland Mission in Kijabe, the Catholic Missions at S Austins Muthangari and Nyeri.

The Catholic Missions were in a league of their own being endowed with ample financial resources compared to their Protestant counterparts and also experience as they had been running missions abroad as far back as the sixteenth century.

Many of the missions set up primary schools for Africans with very little assistance forthcoming from the government. Following initial efforts at forging missionary cooperation, Dr John Arthur who was in charge of the Kikuyu Mission, arranged for a conference to take place at Kikuyu in 1913 for discussions on this subject.

Subsequently, the Alliance of Protestant Missions was formed in 1918 comprising the Church of Scotland Mission(later known as the Presbyterian Church of East Africa), Church of the Province of Kenya, the African Inland Mission and the Methodist Church.

Dr John Arthur was a man who was utterly committed to the welfare of Africans. During World War 1, he was fiercely opposed to the conscription of Africans into the army as porters.

Dr Arthur also worked with the colonial government, applying pressure from within for reforms. He led the Alliance of Protestant Missions into protesting (pun intended) against white settlers’ abuse of African workers in the agricultural sector, and successfully convinced the colonial government not to permit forced labour on settler farms.

He also joined other Church of Scotland missionaries in working on the sidelines of one of the early African independence movements, the Kikuyu Association, led by Harry Thuku.

Dr Arthur was deeply involved in preparation of the Devonshire White Paper of 1923 which declared, among other things, that the interests of Africans were paramount in Kenya. Between 1924 and 1926, Dr Arthur served as the first representative of African interests on the Legislative Council of Kenya.

It was the accepted view amongst many Europeans that Africans should not be allowed an education beyond the basic level as they would not benefit from any higher education. The rationale was that Africans were only useful as a source of cheap labour.

Arthur was strongly opposed to this view and he believed that Kenyans (and indeed all Africans in British colonies) should be given access to primary, secondary and tertiary level education as a matter of right.

He led a group of missionaries and other like-minded people who convinced the British government to open up education not only for Kenyans but for all Africans in all the colonies. Thus Dr Arthur is, in many ways, regarded as the father of education in the whole of the African continent.

The first principal

Against this backdrop, Dr Arthur, almost single handedly, worked tirelessly to establish a high school for Africans at Kikuyu Mission.
Alliance High School opened its doors on March 1, 1926, under the auspices of the Alliance of Protestant Missionaries.

The first principal was George Arthur Grieve and Dr Arthur sat on the school Board of Governors for the next 11 years. Alliance High School soon became the premier African boys’ school in Kenya and in 1939 was the first school to offer the Cambridge School Certificate (today’s O Level) examination for African students.

For many years Alliance High School was the undisputed leader in national examinations until 1986 when the school slipped to third position.
The alumni of Alliance reads like a “Who is Who” in Kenya with many leaders in the political arena, captains of industry, medicine, law, education and others.