Teacher of English

Stantonbury Campus was planned in the early 1970s as a bold social project which would see students and adults studying together and enjoying shared use with the community of a leisure centre and professional theatre which were funded by Milton Keynes Council.

It opened in 1974, under the Founding Head, Geoffrey Cooksey.

The school has been through some challenging times during the last decade or so. In 2015 the governors looked for a suitable to Trust to join and chose the Griffin Schools Trust with whom they shared values.

The vision that GST proposed to the governors was (and very much remains) of a school whose flourishing future is connected to its proud past in a number of ways:

· A strong emphasis on the Arts and Sports, using the exceptional facilities to promote excellence as well as enjoyment. We promised to increase access to the Theatre and Sports/Leisure Centre for students which had been limited since council funding ceased some 15 years ago.

· A renewed focus on international links which the campus did so well in its early years, hosting whole school staff teams and making return visits to exchange best practice and innovation in community based education. 

· A revived and contemporary approach to science, maths, engineering and technology.

We used and added to the governors’ great work in winning STEM funding to secure £22m for a new building at the heart of the school to house STEM subjects. (SIS is the home of the annual Griffin Science Symposium.)

· A 100% achievement mentality (well advanced in the founding GST schools) which will see every student reaching national norms as a minimum

The full realisation of this vision (further described in in Griffin Great Schools) is a long-term project and a great deal of progress has been made in securing infrastructure, improving the estate and introducing the IB Middle Years Programme as the foundation of the curriculum. The school’s name was accordingly changed to Stantonbury International School in September 2017.