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| Ku-ring gai Creative Arts High School | |
|---|---|
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| Harmony in diversity | |
| Established | 20th century |
| School type | Public, Secondary, Day school |
| Principal | Glenda Aulsebrook |
| Location | North Turramurra, New South Wales, Australia  |
| Campus | main |
| Enrolment | 850 |
| School colours | red, green and blue |
| Homepage | http://www.kuringgai-h.schools.nsw.edu.au |
Ku-ring-gai Creative Arts High School is a co-educational high school, specializing in the creative arts located in North Turramurra, New South Wales, Australia and run by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training. The school's motto is "Harmony in Diversity".
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Curriculum
In addition to the usual academic subjects, KCAHS offers drama, dance, music and visual art classes, and vocational education opportunities in the areas of entertainment, photography, performance, ceramics and visual design.
Ku-ring-gai is also the only school in the state to have a NOVA program(NOVA is taken from the word Innovate). This course allows students to think of and apply new ideas and concepts in subjects which are not regularly taught in most other schools - focusing mainly on allowing the students to study practical aspects of an elected course, many of which are based in the Creative Arts. This course is what brought KCAHS to be specialist in Creative Arts.
The school offers two elective lines for years 9 and 10 (+ NOVA), and five for years 11 and 12 [1].
Musicals
The school regularly puts on major musicals:
2000 - Aladdin
2004 - The Wiz
2006 - Little Shop of Horrors
2008 - Seussical the Musical
Creative Arts Groups
The school has the following official musical groups, but sadly lacks a proper orchestra :
- The Ku-ring-gai Singers (choir)
- Senior vocal ensemble
- Wind Ensemble
- Junior Jazz Band
- Senior Jazz Ensemble
- Drama Ensemble
School catchment area and Student selection
As a New South Wales public high school KCAHS has to accept all students living in its catchment which is a very weird shape covering locations in both Ku-ring-gai and Hornsby councils, including Dengar Island. Also the school accepts if there's space those who "demonstrate special interest, commitment and ability in creative arts",[citation needed] as well as their siblings.
School History
The school opened its doors in February 1965 with its first group of year 7 students. KHS was the first of a second wave of new co-educational high schools built in the Sydney suburbs.
The school's first headmaster(in 1965) was Bill Eason, who promoted ideas of internationalism and peace, and later went on to found the Australian Independent School at North Ryde. During his time as headmaster, the school featured a large aviary in the front of the grounds. Bill Eason promoted an international outlook at the high school as well his other love poetry. Students were exposed to many different types of poetry in his poetry classes and in general English classes. The first groups of students learned one of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore Mind Without Fear from Gitanjali for example. The four houses which are still part of the school today and the names of the 4 original classroom buildings were set in 1965 - Churchill, Curie, Tagore and Lincoln. Bill Eason selected these notable historical figures for their contributions in world leadership, science, poetry and humanitarianism. The school colours were originally brown and gold.
It was an ordinary local high school until 1996 when Mrs B. Peatie became the headmistress and changed the school to become a specialist in creative arts. At that time there were only a few hundred students. Since then there has been an increase in students at Ku-ring-gai, with numbers now near 900.
Recent
- The school planned to implement a biometric student attendance system in late March, 2008. The system required students to provide fingerprint data (which was checked against a school controlled biometric database) in order to confirm their attendance each morning. However due to concerns raised by members of the school community in regards to privacy issues, the implementation of the system was postponed indefinitely. The system raised concerns that the sensitive data might intrude on students privacy. As a result, the system was made redundant.(As summarised from [2], and [3])
- On the 8th of April, 2008, there was a bomb threat, on the school around midday. A call had been made to the school claiming that there was a bomb inside one of the classrooms. All students and staff were evacuated to the back oval of the school and remained there until half past one in the afternoon, when it was declared safe to return to class. No explosives were found.
- The School recently upgraded the canteen, and had a competition to name it. The winning name was SHACK, which is a reversed acronym of the school name.
- The school adopted a new mascot in 2008 - a Polar Bear.
- School SRC create a new motto for 2009 'yours and mine in 09'.
- Ku-ring-gai and Fairvale High are two of the only schools in Australia left with a dome shaped halls (all the other ones collapsed) - the Margaret Preston Hall, aka "The Bini Shell"[4].
- The school has now integrated its computers in to the DET Wide area network and Active directory domain, following a two day computer downtime. This was in order to make files accessible to the new year 9 laptops coming in June. This also resulted in the school website going down.
- The School offers annual Creative Arts Tours which perform across the state, in schools, community events, shopping centres and for other various audiences.
- The school recently punished a number of students who exploit one of the settings of the Department of Education's Active Directory domain to share files.
- The school began issuing laptops to its yr9 students on the 15th of September 2009
Computer System
Ku-ring-gai Creative Arts High School has computer system which utilises a Windows 'domain' system, this allows for a user to log in and access their own files on any of the school computers. The school library and some of the other computer rooms utilize a set of terminals which are cheaper then normal computers, the disadvantages, however, are that if someone uses a relatively large program, it can drain speed from other computers. The teachers also have extra terminal servers with a total of six on the network called 8416-ST001 to 8416-ST006.
The school's computers run a either Windows XP or Windows Terminal Client, the Terminal Servers used are Windows Server 2003 RC2.
As of the 5th of March 2009 the school Active Directory domain has been integrated into the NSW Department of Education Wide Area Network, this resulted in a loss of files for many students when the schools main server was wiped in order to integrate it into the domain.[citation needed]
The school website after being down for 1 and a 1/2 terms ,due to the files loss referenced above, runs the CMS software Joomla.
See also
- List of Government schools in New South Wales
- List of creative and performing arts high schools in New South Wales
- One of the school's assignments
References
- ^ School Website, curiculum section
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2008
- ^ The Daily Telegraph, News Limited, April 3, 2008
- ^ http://www.binisystems.com/nswcover.html
External links
- Ku-ring-gai Creative Arts High School website
- NSW Department of Education and Training: Ku-ring-gai Creative Arts High School
- School Facebook group
- Another School Facebook group
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