[3] A year later St. Plessington returned to England, where he ministered to recusant and covert Roman Catholics in Holywell and Cheshire.

He was arrested during the Popish Plot scare on the charge of being a Roman Catholic priest, and then imprisoned for two months.

[4] In celebration of their patron saint, the school holds an annual St John Plessington day on 19 July where all students and teachers take part in a various spiritual and recreational activities.

[citation needed] Students maliciously activating the fire alarms is common, in some cases this has happened twice in the same day.

[5] The School itself is named after a patron saint, and has a very strong Roman Catholic ethos which can be seen throughout the corridors and classrooms with posters.

The school has a six-room dedicated SEN[6] centre off the dining hall staffed with 10+ teaching assistants for pupils with mental or learning disabilities.

In the old building the school has two fully equipped Art rooms with paint and ceramic facilities.

A "period 6" was introduced which extended the school day, providing more teaching time particularly for Maths to better prepare students for their GCSEs, however this has been removed likely due to covid-19 restrictions.

In 2003, the school took over twelve newly built classrooms which house the RE and English departments and in 2004 benefited from a £5m building program which gave the school twelve additional classrooms, housing the Maths and Modern Foreign Languages(now ICT), two new DT workshops, a new library, a new main hall, a new atrium, reception and administrative area and a new sixth form common room.

In December 2021 it was announced that there would be a new build of a classroom block,[5] the school had planning permission approved over 5 years before from Wirral council [8] a raised decking area for sixth form students was removed to make room for this.

There are numerous pastoral systems in place in SJP which care for a student's college life.