[1] The school uses vertical tutoring to integrate the community of students across the range of ages and year groups.

[2] It is one of a few schools in Newham that provides specialist British sign language interpreters for students who have hearing impairments.

[2] The school was founded by West Ham Council in 1921 as Livingstone Day Continuation Institute, in Balaam Street Congregational schoolroom.

[4] In 2005 Lister pupils won a poetry slam, and the school magazine Carbolic (named in honour of the school's namesake, local surgeon Joseph Lister) gained high praise from Benjamin Zephaniah and Michael Rosen.

[9] In academic year 2020 Health and Social care started being taught at the school by the RS department.