How to use school records at Southampton Archives

We hold admissions registers for Southampton schools, providing pupils’ names, dates of birth, and dates of admission. The registers also list the pupil’s parents, address, the last school they attended before the one they had just registered for, when they left it and why, whether they were exempted from religious instruction, and the dates of any medical inspections carried out on the pupil.

Admissions registers are a useful tool for finding out if and when someone attended a particular school, but they are subject to data protection regulations, which means that only those listing pupils who were born over 100 years ago are open to the public.

School logbooks are a record of the daily events which occurred in a school, such as attendance, rates, disciplinary matters, staff and pupil sicknesses and class cancellations. While individual pupils are sometimes mentioned, the logs are more general summaries of the goings-on during the school week and do not offer much detail beyond short notes.

Punishment books are a list of punishments for bad behaviour by pupils. They give the date the punishment occurred, the name(s) of the pupil(s) involved and the nature of their offence, which class they were in, what punishment they were handed, and the signature or initials of the teacher who carried out the punishment. Punishments varied, from verbal warnings all the way to caning (along with how many stripes of the cane the pupil suffered).

Offences mentioned in the books include truancy, smoking, stealing, trespassing, bullying, poor attendance, rudeness, and many, many more.

We hold magazines for some schools. Magazines are an effective tool for finding out about an ancestor’s time at school. A person is likely to be featured if they played on a sport’s team, were involved in a community event, achieved notable exam results, or contributed to the magazine by writing an article. Topics covered by magazines include puzzles, sporting events, school news, and visits by notable figures and alumni.

We have extensive school photographs, showing pupils, staff, activities, teams, and school buildings. Many of the photos are indexed in our Reading Room under the name of the school.

The photos do not usually mention individual pupils by name, so it helps to know if the person you are looking for participated in any teams or extracurricular activities.

Exam results

Unfortunately, we do not hold any records of exam results. For further information on obtaining a replacement for a lost exam certificate, please consult the guide available on the GOV.UK website.