Occasionally you will receive requests for historical records, usually staff and student records. The types of files retained from the 1960's for example will be very different to the document retention requirements of today.
We always instruct individuals needing to do a search for these files to start a broad search, then narrow down the search as you understand how files from these decades have been stored.
When searching for historical files, we recommend following these steps:
- In the search function, leave all fields blank except the start and end dates.
- Enter the date range of the files you are looking for. As an example, If you are searching for student attendance records in the years between 1965-1971 you would enter 01/01/1965 into the start date and 31/12/1971
- This will display all of the files kept for this time period. In some cases, no files will show results as records may not have been kept from that far in history, have been lost or the records never existed.
- Once you can see how files have been entered in the past, you can start to narrow down your search.
Note that in most cases, individual student and staff files have not been kept for most schools. You will likely instead find your school has a range of attendance registers or pupil registers. It is important to thoroughly search through these registers to see if the person being searched for can be found on one of these.
If you need help with your search, email your request to orders@smartrecordsgroup.com.au and our team will be able to assist.