UK folks - getting hold of your educational records?

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Can you do this, and how far back?

I remember a number of 'discussions' about me going on when I was in infant school, and I was placed in what passed for remedial class, but my family were never honest about exactly what went on. I'd love to get hold of my records from that time, but it was the 1970s, they'd have been paper records and I don't know if the education authorities would even keep anything that far back, or if they'd allow me access to them if they had.

Any clues, anyone, or experience of trying to get hold of stuff that old?

"I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record"

i was placed in remedial classes (or whatever the british term for it is) when i was a kid, it was a humiliating experience- have you seen the episode of The Simpsons where Bart is put in a special ed class? it was just like that!
i think the permanent educational record is a myth- it's impractical, how would they store all those (paper) files?

My mother was a teacher in the UK in the 70's (5 to 11 year olds). I just asked her after seeing this and she said that they were advised in those days to write any records like that which were kept in the school in pencil. Obviously so they can change it if needed afterwards. She said anything like that would've needed your parents permission. In fact if there was anything written down about you she said they would've been more likely to post it to your parents than keep it in the school.

She says the only thing you can do is ask your old school if they have any records and that under the freedom of information act you have the right to push them to look as hard as they can for anything.

I'm guessing either your parents are not supportive if you're looking for a diagnosis or else you're not in contact with them. I'm not sure you'll get any info from anyone but them on this.

I work in education in the UK (at a secondary school) and from my experience it's extremely unlikely that there will be surviving paper records at a general academic level. Certainly we don't keep them for more than a few years (five I think, but something of that order) after a child leaves. SEN departments might keep records for longer (I'm not sure, I'll ask on Monday). If you ever had any kind of evaluation done in a hospital they might possibly still have paper records - I also briefly worked with hospital medical records and some of them went back thirty years or so, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they still have them - same goes for your GP.

EnglishforAliens - Actually, they're both now deceased. I'd really hoped something might have come out about this after my mother's death earlier this year, but I have the suspicion that she was the one most likely to have been in denial, and that if she'd had anything in writing she would have destroyed it long ago. My brother, who's much older than me (and his wife, who'd just married him when this stuff happened) might remember something if he'd known, but again, I suspect that my mother would have taken care to make sure that anything between her and the school got out to as few people as possible - in fact, I'm not even sure my dad knew about any of it.

From what my SIL has said, I know she swallowed my mother's 'official' version, which was 'You were a difficult, naughty child and you were put in special class to make you sit still and be good.' Which doesn't wash with me, because I recall the lessons in that class and they were barely lessons at all - well behind what my class had been doing in the main school (and I was if anything advanced beyond that educationally - at age 6-7 I had a reading age of about 10, I remember a teacher actually saying that). One of the kids in that class, at least, had Down syndrome - I remember that because at that age, I'd never met anyone like that before and I actually found them quite scary - and the others were what was known at that time as 'backward'.

The net result of me being in that class was that when I went back to the main school classes (and I was, note, apparently the only person who was in there temporarily - I never saw any of the others again), the other kids taunted me for having been in, and I quote, the 'sp****cs' class', and I had even more trouble fitting in socially than I'd been having before I went in. Since its purpose seems to have been to deal with kids with educational/developmental rather than disciplinary issues, I figure there must have been something more than just 'being naughty' wrong with me for them to have put me there...but it appears I've now got no way of finding out what really happened.

Ambivalence, I don't remember ever getting as far as any kind of medical evaluation. I can surmise that the school might have suggested it, but I somehow don't think I would have been taken for it. Denial, like I said, was always a big thing in my family of origin. That's why I was wondering about school records.

If you visit the school, it might even be possible that some of your teachers from that time are still there - we've got staff who have been in the same place for a very long time.

Most teachers in the uk try to retire before 60. I doubt those involved are still there. You can still ask under the freedom of information act, they are obliged to let you see anything they wrote down about you.

If this is for a diagnosis if you go private your word would be enough. I had similar issues when I was aged 5-7 and I didn't need any school records to prove it. Though my mother was there at the diagnosis to give more details and back it up. She actually gave more info than I knew, for example she said if I had my toys out in the garden she'd try to get another child in to play with me but we wouldn't play together. We'd play on our own just with the same toy baskets, I was in my own world and other children only wanted to play in my garden if I had a toy they didn't have. They didn't want to play with me, wheras her friends children could "play together" without any toys. I'd never have been able to remember or describe something like that.