English

KYUSHU INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL

Governor :Mr. Toshiaki Takano
Principal　:Mr. Masakazu Itou
The number of teachers : 57
The number of students : 679

Context

Location and History

Kyushu International University Girls High School was established on a hill in a residential area in the northern part of Kitakyushu City near Dokai Bay 43 years ago. With a proud history of providing high quality education to students having a wide range of educational needs and abilities, the school maintains an excellent reputation in the community. Kitakyushu City, once famous for its coal mine and Nippon Steel Company, is located in a mountainous area near the coast. The city is undergoing an extensive program to recover and preserve the natural beauty of its environment and the quality of its rivers and bay.

Facilities

The school has 19 regular classrooms, an art room, a music room, two piano rooms, a calligraphy room, science rooms, two language rooms, an audio visual room, a computer room, two consulting rooms, a career-consulting room, a nurse’s room, a cafeteria, a library, tennis courts, a soccer field and four gymnasiums.

Courses

There are three courses ---the Shingaku Course for students who aim at entering general universities,Tokushin Course for students who aim at passing entrance examinations of higher level universities and International Culture Course for students who aim to be internationally minded citizens. The International Culture Course was established in 1992 with the objective of providing young people an opportunity to expand their vision through exposures to different cultures. The focus of the course curriculum is language study, specifically, English, Korean, and Chinese.Exchange programs with sister schools in Korea, China, and Australia help the students experience first hand cultures different from their own.

Club Activities

The school is also known for its variety of interesting club activities, which include sports clubs such as badminton, tennis, table tennis, basketball, softball, volleyball, track and field, kendo, and cultural clubs such as art, Japanese calligraphy, the school band, cooking, sewing, drama, Japanese tea ceremony, animation, biology, environmental chemistry, rock music, English conversation, mathematics, the school newspaper, broadcasting, Japanese literature and a volunteer activities club.? There are 24 different clubs in all. The badminton and field track teams are particularly well known, each ranking high nationally every year.

The badminton team has the illustrious history of three national championships. The environmental chemistry club qualified for participation in a nation-wide competition with their project for finding effective ways toutilize soy-bean waste from the production of tofu. The school band regularly wins the band competitions sponsored by the city of Kitakyushu or Fukuoka Prefecture each year. The students in the volunteer activities club go out into the community to help disabled people in various ways, and participate in various 　fund raising activities.

School Events

The school year starts in April and ends in March. Students enjoy a variety of school events. The entire student body enjoys a day trip to an amusement park each May. Sports competitions between the various classes are held each July and March.Two big festivals, Culture Festival the Sports Festival, are held in June and September, respectively. The second year students have a 4-day school trip to Tokyo in October. During the same month, the first- year students in the International Culture course have a 4-day 　homestay-cum-sightseeing to Korea.The second- year students of International Culture Course have a 14-　day trip to Australia on a home stay program which includes 10 days of classes at our Australian sister 　school, the Walford Anglican School in Adelaide.

Student Body Council

The members of the Student Body Council are elected to the council following a week of campaigning and public speech making in May.Aided by the efforts of many students outside the council, they work hard to organize and produce a successful Culture Festival and Sports Festival each year.They also suggest ways toimprove the quality of school life and the quality of students’ manners, and organize various fund-raising activities each academic year.