Tēnā koutou! A warm welcome to you.
Pinehurst is one of New Zealand’s leading independent schools. We offer children care, guidance and exceptional opportunities, in and out the classroom, from the age of 5 to the final days a young person has in school before heading to university or the world of work.
The school is in Albany, on Auckland’s North Shore, a few minutes from the motorway. Our grounds are large, green and fringed with trees; but our school is small enough to ensure that nobody gets lost. You will find a calm, settled atmosphere in the classroom and around the school. There are approximately 1000 students in total, and we think that this is the perfect number: everybody knows who everyone is, and we are large enough to offer a wide range of opportunities inside and outside the classroom. We also have clear expectations of students’ conduct, which are often exceeded.
Excellent Resourcing
Teachers always have the time and the environment for real teaching and learning. They have excellent resourcing: they have the technological resources they need, the classroom environment to support learning and the additional resourcing of the Cambridge International Examinations system. We teach the Cambridge International Examinations system from Year 1-13, and were the first school in New Zealand to do so. That means that we have a secure, internationally-recognised, stable and rigorous assessment framework, supported internally, nationally and internationally by other teachers.
Individual Focus
Our class sizes are generally up to 22 in the primary school, between 15 and 25 in Year 7-9, and averaging around 15 in Year 10-13. In Year 12-13, it’s not unusual to have classes of fewer than 10 students. Small classes lead to individual attention, and the time to devise responses that address every student’s specific learning needs. Nothing matters more than the relationship between a teacher and a young person. It’s the foundation of learning, and supports the happiness of the whole community.
Open Communication
Our school is a caring one: ours is a family. As in all families, there is a diversity of views and opinions, and we encourage those to be expressed within the context of our mutual respect for each other. When we were established in 1991, the founding Board created the “Pinehurst Triangle”, a way of describing the importance of the relationship between the child, the parent and the school. The Pinehurst Triangle matters to us: when parents join our community, they find they are asked to express their views more than they expect. We really do listen, because it is the whole community who matter.
Pinehurst's Focus
All that said, there are core values which inform what we do. Pinehurst’s mission includes providing each student with an excellent education in a safe, supportive environment that promotes self-discipline, leadership, motivation and excellence in learning, and this is something we all believe in, and expect our whole community to support. We also want students to develop skills to become independent and self-sufficient adults who will succeed and contribute responsibly in the global community. Ours is a community led by values.