Pinehurst School

Pinehurst was opened in 1991 by a small group of committed parents and staff. The original roll was 34 students. Initially, the site and buildings were leased, however courage and foresight demonstrated by the original Board ensured the purchase of 8 hectares in the Albany Basin, a site now worth millions of dollars.

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 900 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our academic focus is on the development and consolidation of basic skills in numeracy and literacy that create a solid foundation on which to build. Pinehurst Primary works within two levels – the Junior Primary and Senior Primary to best meet the needs of our students’ development.New Entrant intakes occur at the beginning of each term and new students attend two orientation visits before they start.

When your child starts at Pinehurst they will either move into a brand-new class of no more than 15 students with one experienced teacher or they will join a class of fewer than 25 students with two teachers to ensure the individual attention that matters so much. In their second year and third years the teacher student ratio is 1:22.

The Senior Primary School has 9 classrooms covering Years 4 to 6, ages 8-11. Each year has two parallel classes with a maximum of 25 students in each class.Our aim is that our College students will be studious and well-grounded, striving for excellence in their academic studies, sporting and cultural fields and possess a strong sense of direction and good judgement.