Oprah Winfrey is handing her $40 million South African school back to the government

Oprah Winfrey is closing the school she has called her greatest legacy and handing the campus back to the South African government.

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will end operations in its current form at the close of the 2027 academic year, after which the residential campus in Henley on Klip, Gauteng, returns to the provincial Department of Education. Winfrey's organisation said the handover was envisaged in the original partnership agreement.

She is replacing it with scholarships.

"The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women," Winfrey, 72, said in a statement. She described the change as an evolution rather than an ending, saying her purpose does not end with one campus.

A representative said the scholarship model will allow double the number of girls to access education, and that the expanded reach was the core of the decision.

The arithmetic behind that claim is straightforward. The academy enrols 322 students across grades eight to twelve, employing 33 teaching staff on a purpose-built residential campus. Boarding schools are expensive per pupil. Paying tuition at existing schools removes the cost of running buildings, catering, dormitories and grounds, and the same money covers more girls.

The transition is being phased. Two more classes will graduate before the handover. Students unable to complete their schooling at the academy will be placed at other top-tier schools, with tuition paid in full by Winfrey through to graduation.

The school cost about $40 million to build and opened in January 2007, after a six-year effort that began with a conversation with Nelson Mandela in 2000. Winfrey told him she wanted to create a school for smart girls who would lead the country into glory. Mandela had argued in a 2001 interview that building schools and providing scholarships was how people escape illiteracy and poverty.

The opening drew Tina Turner, Spike Lee and Mary J. Blige to a small town south of Johannesburg. Winfrey, who grew up poor in Mississippi, said she had selected girls who came from disadvantaged circumstances but carried a light that poverty and disease could not dim.

More than 1,000 girls have graduated since. The inaugural class of 72 finished in 2011. The academy teaches the Independent Examinations Board curriculum and its pupils sit the National Senior Certificate, and it has produced graduates who have gone on to universities in South Africa and abroad.

It has not been without difficulty. A dormitory matron was arrested in late 2007 on charges of indecent assault against pupils, forcing Winfrey to address the case by video link from Chicago months after the school opened. She has remained personally involved since, describing the pupils as her daughters and attending graduations.

The handover raises a question the announcement does not address. The campus passes to the Gauteng Department of Education, which will continue running it as a school. Gauteng is South Africa's wealthiest province by output but its education system carries significant pressure on classroom numbers and infrastructure. Whether a facility built to private boarding standards can be sustained on a provincial budget is not addressed in any of the material released this week.

Winfrey has not said how much she will commit to the scholarship programme, how many girls it will support, or which schools will receive them.

She built a second school in KwaZulu-Natal shortly after the academy opened, and her foundation has funded education projects in South Africa for more than two decades. Forbes has consistently ranked her among the wealthiest self-made women in the United States, and the academy has been the most visible expression of her giving outside America.

The final intake will complete its schooling on the campus she built. After that, the gates pass to the state, and the money follows the girls instead.