The Pines Schools operate as a cooperative campus: CPC to Year 7 and an R to 7 New Arrivals Intensive English Language Centre. A community childcare centre shares our site. Our values are belonging, respect and fun. Our school vision is to provide an environment that is caring, engaging, and enables all learners in the school community to recognise and achieve their full potential. Our mission statement is that diversity is recognised and celebrated. Relationships between all community members are highly valued. We respond to both global and local issues. Environmental practices reflect the pride we have in our community. Teaching and learning for the digital age guides our classroom practices. We recognise that social, emotional, physical and academic learning all contribute to learner wellbeing. We have a diverse and rich cultural student population. Our improvement priorities to 2013 are literacy (comprehension), writing and numeracy, as well as building professional learning communities (PLCs) to support staff to collaboratively plan, program, assess, and evaluate for learning and explicit teaching. We are developing new assessment practices of, for and as learning and exploring how this relates to new national curriculum. As part of our work in literacy, we explore genre writing, looking at how texts are constructed and critical literacy higher-order thinking. Our innovative school has a focus on developing healthy lifestyles and increased physical activity for all students. Literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology are embedded in the curriculum along with wellbeing, the arts and ‘be active’ programs. Intervention programs for students at risk are also an integral part of our school. We have a dedicated literacy time each day in early and primary year classes and operate annual programs such as Grandparents and Special Visitors’ Day. We also celebrate many culturally significant events importanty to our community. We have a strong commitment to developing a socially-just..