"Things have changed," she said.
Her fondest memories were of spending time with the other students, many of whom she grew very close to.
The education side of things is a little fuzzier as she never felt like she was very academic, she said.
Mrs Kawhia came to the school as a boarder from Ruatoria when she was about 15, and missed her family.
"I was homesick quite a lot."
On her first day she walked up to the front door, which had a grate in it, and could see people with headgear on and their eyes peeping out.
"I got such a fright, I wanted to go home. I didn't know they were nuns."
When she left school in 1941 she joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a telephone operator.
After the war ended she moved back to Ruatoria, married Edward Kawhia (a retired serviceman) and had six children.
She now has 19 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
Mrs Kawhia's aunt, Emily Walker, also attended the school and spent most of her life there.
Ms Walker arrived as a toddler in 1877 and lived there until she died in 1959.
She went blind at the age of 10 and spent her adult life with the sisters, helping with the school laundry.
Ms Walker and her sister were sent to the school by their father, who was in the Armed Forces and would often send parcels of clothes to them from England.
School archivist Sister Sarah Greenlees said Sisters of Our Lady of the Mission founder Euphrasie Barbier asked the sisters at St Joseph's to look after Ms Walker after she went blind and they did just that - she lived out her days with them.
She would be read to every night and taken out for a walk once a week by students.
When the school moved to its current site in 1935, Ms Walker was offered a room, but remained with some of the sisters on the former site on Bluff Hill.
