Sir Graham Balfour High School

Welcome to Sir Graham Balfour School which OFSTED in May 2019 found to be a ‘Good’ school. I hope you find the information it contains useful and informative.

Our vision is summed up in our mission statement – 

‘Learning, Working and Succeeding Together’ 

For us, the ‘together’ is absolutely critical; collaboration, cooperation and teamwork are essential for developing the skills, knowledge and confidence necessary for academic and personal excellence. As well as the drive to achieve academically, the ability to self-regulate, to communicate clearly with others, to know and be proud of who you are, to be compassionate to others and to be ambitious for yourself and others are equally important. 

We passionately believe that the circumstances of birth or upbringing should not be the key determining factors to success in life and we are relentless in our ambition for ALL children to achieve as well as possible at Sir Graham Balfour School, regardless of their sexual orientation, socio-economic, ethnic, religious or gender status.

Our Values

Our aim as a school, working alongside parents and our community, is to help students to become outstanding 

and effective citizens; to make responsible, appropriate and healthy choices in all things. Staff and parents will not always be there, at the point where critical decisions need to be made. This is why we are committed to values based learning; rules prescribe a set of appropriate/inappropriate behaviours (e.g. don’t run in the corridors) which are specific to given contexts, whereas values provide a set of aspirational guidelines within which children must choose the right behaviour or action for the vast array of contexts they will be faced with in life (e.g. how do I need to move around the school if I am taking responsibility for myself and others?).

These are the values which we believe will help our students to become excellent citizens of Stafford and beyond:

• Commitment to excellence 
• Responsibility for ourselves and others 
• Care for the local and wider Community 
• Respect, Kindness and Compassion for ourselves and others 
• Perseverance and resilience 
• Ambition for ourselves and others 
• Pride in working hard and the success it brings 

Our values drive and shape every aspect of school life, taking the place of school rules. They seek to reinforce the development of the whole person, in addition to the academic. They are values which will, if routinely exemplified and embedded, give our young people all the skills and characteristics necessary to become outstanding citizens of the future.