Our School

Why work at Pinehurst?

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 and from one of Auckland’s largest shopping malls. Our grounds are large, green and fringed with trees; but our school is small enough to ensure that nobody gets lost. There are around 1000 students in total, and we think that this is just about the perfect number: everybody knows who everyone is, and we are large enough to offer a very wide range of opportunities inside and outside the classroom.

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 professional respect for each other. That said, there are core values which inform all that 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, for example, and this is something we all believe in, and expect all of our staff 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.

Our classes are smaller than you will find in other schools: this helps our teachers to offer children individual attention, and to make sure that they are supported and challenged in their learning. This, fundamentally, is what matters to us more than anything else.

There are benefits to working at Pinehurst. But the biggest benefit of all is that you will be joining a community that will support your development in your role, and that will enrich your life.

Teaching, Learning and Students

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. At Pinehurst, our wonderful students enable teachers to build an environment where the focus is always on learning.

• Class sizes are small: up to 22 in the primary school, between 15 and 25 in Years 7-9, and averaging around 15 in Years 10-13. In Years 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 student’s specific learning needs.
• A calm, settled atmosphere in the classroom and around the school. We have clear expectations of students’ conduct, and they nearly always exceed our expectations. You always have the time and the environment for real teaching and learning.
• Excellent resourcing: you have the technological resources you need, the classroom environment to support learning and the additional resourcing of the Cambridge International Examinations system. You have all the support you could possibly need.
• A settled, rigorous assessment system. We teach the Cambridge International Examinations system from Years 1-13. We 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.