Lessons included technical and craft skills, taught through dual or multi-purpose creative methods.

A book chronicling the school's demise made publishing history in 1968 by becoming the UK's first non-fiction best-seller.

These assertions, some of which came from individuals claiming to be well acquainted with the school, and the events leading up to and including its closure, was the impetus for establishing the Risinghill Research Group (RRG).

The second book, Risinghill Revisited: The Waste Clay, focuses more on the research with the teachers and the pupils, giving them all a voice for the first time.

The research with the pupils is of particular interest as many have prospered in life, despite all the meddling with their education and despite their being written off as failures on account of their association with a school that has been dubbed a "blackboard jungle" and worse.