These images showed students having medical examinations, taking part in sports and domestic science lessons, cooking over open fires and cultivating the school's playing field to grow food.

However, the inspectors found the syllabuses to be too ambitious with the school moving forward too quickly, with teaching staff confused by arrangements which were complicated and difficult to manage.

The Big Band and Senior Chamber Choir perform locally and the school organises a music tour bi-annually, geared mainly towards these two groups (though anyone is welcome).

In 2005 students from the school appeared as extras in the television film Tom Brown's Schooldays starring Alex Pettyfer and Stephen Fry.

[26] Guest speakers at the school have included former politicians Shirley Williams and Edwina Currie, film and television composers David Arnold and Debbie Wiseman, Cardinal Basil Hume, academic Professor Lord Soulsby, IVF pioneer Peter Brinsden, scientist Professor Sir John Polkinghorne, Professor Mick Aston from Time Team, entrepreneur and founder of the online urban music platform SB.TV Jamal Edwards, former Cabinet Minister Lord MacGregor, two-times Olympic silver medallist Jonathan Glanfield,[27] journalist and author Quentin Letts, musician, journalist and priest Richard Coles, businessman and civil servant Sir Peter Gershon and actor Shane Richie.

In June 2012 a group of students from the school met the Duchess of Cornwall as they had volunteered to help apply SmartWater to Baldock's war memorial in order to protect it from theft by metal thieves.

On 14 June 2014 Mr John Glover, the then Head of the Humanities Faculty and Co-ordinator for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme, was appointed MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to Education.