Lister Community School is a non-selective, mixed, 11-16 comprehensive secondary school, located at St Mary’s Road, Plaistow, Newham, London. In November 2008, an Ofsted inspection rated the school "Good with outstanding features". This was downgraded to "Satisfactory" following an inspection in 2012. but upgraded again to "Good" in the recent inspection in November 2013, with 64% of lessons inspected rated as "good" or "outstanding" and none "inadequate". The current headteacher of the school, since September 2011, is Anthony Wilson. The school uses vertical tutoring to integrate the community of students across the range of ages and year groups. It is one of a few schools in Newham that provides specialist British sign language interpreters for students who have hearing impairments. Lister Community School also is one of the most improved schools in the whole of Great Britain and London. HM The Queen visited Lister on 3 March 2016.
History
The school was founded by West Ham Council in 1921 as Livingstone Day Continuation Institute, in Balaam Street Congregational schoolroom. It relocated a few times, was briefly absorbed into North West Ham Technical School after World War II, and was successively renamed as Lister Day-Continuation Institute, Lister Technical School, Lister Comprehensive and finally Lister Community School. Purpose-built facilities for the school were completed in the 1990s. In 2003, pupils staged a walk-out in protest against the invasion of Iraq. In 2005 Lister pupils won a poetry slam, and the school magazine Carbolic gained high praise from Benjamin Zephaniah and Michael Rosen.
Expansion and Curriculum
The school moved into brand new premises completed in 2010 at a cost of £25 million under the Building Schools for the Future programme. In 2017 the school started teaching GCSEs from Year 9 instead of Year 10 with the first class graduating in 2020. Between 2018-2019 Lister Community School gained 7 more classrooms and a new "learning hub".
A new classroom was created on the second floor by moving the EAL office to the library
4 new classrooms were created by an extension to W block which provided 4 new English classrooms
3 new classrooms and a new careers office were created in a new "E"
A new classroom was built replacing a small office as "S001"
The classroom S008 was removed and expanded to hold a computer room managed by the library.
In 2019 a plan to increase the schools capacity from 9 forms of entry to 11 forms of entry in 2021 was consulted on. In academic year 2020Health and Social care started being taught at the school by the RS department.
On 16/03/2020 the School introduced precautionary Coronavirus measures taking out students who have severe health conditions and starting lessons at 9:00
After repeated staff absences due to self quarantines the school operated a reduced timetable for the remainder of the week.
