Kahuhia Girls High School

BRIEF HISTORY OF KAHUHIA GIRLS` HIGH SCHOOL

The Church Missionary Society [C.M.S] started the Missionary set up here in 1906. They set up a Co-Educational elementary school with boarding facilities for both girls and boys.
The Teacher Training School or the Normal School as it was popularly called was introduced in 1923.It was training P3 teachers. Those who qualified to join the college were Std. V graduates, which was equivalent to present day Std. 8.

In 1940, the practicing school was introduced. Some of the girls were taken as boarders.
The rest of the school was moved to Gatitu-ini, which is the present day Kahuhia Primary
School. Only the big girls who were boarders and the small boys were left on this compound.

The Secondary School was introduced in 1959 to replace all the other institutions. The idea was hatched by what was called, Rural Deaconal Council.

The Teacher Training College was finally phased out in 1961 along with the Intermediate School.

The first form one was one stream of 35 students. But after the other institutions were phased out, the school started the second stream. The school continued as a double streamed school with a total of 280 students until 1969, when `A` Level stream was introduced. With the increasing demand for girls` secondary school education, the local community pressed and managed to convince the school management to introduce a Harambee stream, to cater mainly for local interest. This came into being in 1975. A third Government stream was introduced in 1978, thus bring the school to the current status of 4 streams.

“A” LEVELS

The school got its first “A” level stream that was Arts based in 1969. The one stream Arts remained until 1986. In this year, the effects of the introduction of the quarter system at form V selection compelled the management to introduce a second Arts class; this time on Harambee bases. After all, this did not demand extra facilities in either tuition or boarding.

CURRENT STATUS

Physical facilities

The school has continued to use the old buildings done in the 1920`s. These are, eight dormitories, teachers and support staff houses, the agriculture,
Art and design and music workshops and the common room for teachers. Recent buildings done from the 1960`s to date include:-

Sixteen classrooms –the school is four streamed.
A model home science room.
A computer laboratory constructed in 2007.
A modern Library in a two storied building.
A water plant with two electrical pumps.
An automatic generator to serve the classrooms and the dormitories.

Curriculum/Co-Curricular activities

The following subjects are offered in the school:

English
Kiswahili
Mathematics
Geography
History and Government
Christian Religious Education
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Business Education
Home Science
Agriculture
Art and Design
Music
Computer studies
Physical Education

CO-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

We offer a wide range of activities like Volleyball, Netball, Hockey, Basketball,
Handball and Racquet games.

Our girls participate in both truck and field events. As for clubs, we have the Red Cross,St. John Ambulance, Scouts, Guides, the Christian Union, the Catholic Action, Drama, Science Club, Mathematics, Debating, Interacts, Journalism, Wildlife and Young farmers.

We take our students to the National Level during the music festivals.

STAFFING

The school has forty teachers employed by the Teachers service Commission, and one teacher employed by the Board of Governors. The support staffs are thirty five in number.

ENROLMENT

The school has grown from a one streamed school of thirty five students to a four streamed school of seven hundred and seventy students.

CHALLENGES:

Curriculum Implementation: The school needs a Christian Religious Education teacher.
Fees: A number of our students come from very poor backgrounds,as a result, the students have to keep going home for fees.
Infrastructure: As stated earlier, some of the buildings in use are very old.
The Population of the girls has grown, new dormitories are required. The water system too is no longer able to meet the needs of the expanded population.
The school bus and Van break down often as they too are old.

ACHIEVEMENTS

We are grateful to the Ministry of Education for supporting the school in:-

Funds for the e-learning project
Funds for infrastructure that enabled us paint the roof of the classrooms and construction of a fume chamber in the Chemistry Lab
Endowment Fund. With the help of the old girls and friends of this school, an endowment fund is in place and it supports a few girls in paying fees.

PROJECTIONS:

The school will launch its strategic plan in third term this year. This is expected to rejuvenate the Kahuhia Girls` stakeholders and give them an impetus to improve in all aspects of the school.
The funds raised during the 50th. Anniversary will boost the endowment kitty and also support this year`s project – enhancing the water plant at Kabuku, river in order to provide adequate water to the school
The school will start offering one foreign language next year.

Computer Studies

The number of students taking Computer Studies is distributed as below:

Class	No. of ITstudents
Form One	80
Form Two	70
Form Three	5
Form Four(candidate class)	12
Total IT students	167students

Few students are interested in pursuing IT beyond the third and fourth years. Most students prefer a different elective unit such as home science.

The School has one teacher for Computer Studies attending to the 167 students.

The school is a beneficiary of the Government initiative of e-learning. The basic hardware and software infrastructure is already in place. However, as reported by the Principal, very little has been achieved in terms of implementation of the e-learning initiative.

Resource	Number	Utility
Computers	20 client machines 1 switch 1 server	The network set-up is new and in good working condition
Internet Connectivity	None	None
Teaching Material	Limited	Used by all students
Software	Installed on all machines	Microsoft packages

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