The Guardian newspaper has been running an amusing correspondence about school reports in its letters column. My contribution appeared in today’s paper – quoting two of my Cardiff High School reports from the 1970s, the first from my third form (the modern year 9) maths teacher.

I have an almost complete set of my school reports from 1972 to 1982, just before I sat my A levels. Looking back, it is striking how brief primary school reports were in the early 1970s. Take this example from Lakeside Primary School, Cardiff:

(There was a brief summary by the class teacher as well.)

In those primary years, there was a section about handwriting, and few reports went by without a comment about my poor handwriting. ‘If only he could be neater!… Untidy! … Still lacking in shape… poor…’ My mother even bought me a copy of Teach Yourself Handwriting but my attempts to practise neater writing didn’t last long. To be fair, my handwriting had improved by the time I sat my A levels – I can still easily read my mock exam essays.

Rereading the old reports, I was surprised to see a glowing report from the primary teacher I liked least, when I was nine. Miss Lloyd was terrifying, and almost the first thing she said to me was, ‘What language is this – Chinese?’ on seeing my handwriting. One day she told me off for losing so many pens, and threatening dire consequences if I lost another. Needless to say I did, and I vividly remember lying in the bath that evening, stressed about going into school the next day. Nothing happened, but 52 years later I was amused to see her comments in the report: ‘At times he is possibly over-anxious and perhaps takes life rather too seriously’…

Curiously, my Welsh teacher Mrs Davies always praised me for working well or very good work even when giving me a C rating.

I was well into my fifties when Dad gave me a stack of my school reports that he and Mum had kept. It was unusual for him to keep old school materials and books – as I blogged recently he tended to throw these away without telling me. I read the report above, issued just after my O level mocks, with some pain. I had done very badly in some of my subjects, especially chemistry and French, and my teachers stated bluntly that I needed to work much harder to do well in my O levels. (My mother had made a similar point when she found me day dreaming rather than revising over the Christmas holidays.) The warnings worked: I did reasonably well, especially in my favourite subjects, history, commerce and English language and literature, and didn’t disgrace myself in the others.

One postscript to that report. My O level chemistry teacher says that I would be better suited to CSE rather than O level. The Certificate of Secondary Education ran in parallel to O levels, and was designed for less academically able pupils. I was mortified at first to be told I couldn’t sit chemistry O level (although with 22 percent in the mock, it was clear I would fail) but loved my five months in the CSE chemistry class. It was clearly at my ability level, and I got the top CSE grade, 1, in the exam. Years later a school friend, Alison, recalled being surprised when I joined the CSE class: ‘We thought you were brainy!’ My experience showed the importance of adapting education to the needs of the child rather than a one size fits all approach. CSEs and O levels were replaced by GCSE eight years later.

Looking back, I can see that I didn’t work nearly as hard as I should have done especially at high school. My 16 year old son Owen is working far harder and achieving much more consistently high grades. In short, he’s much more conscientious than his father was…