WholeRecord exists because published clinical research found that school reports can carry patterns relevant to ADHD assessment — including patterns in what the reports do not say. We built a system that applies that research, systematically, to the reports you already have.
It reads every school report you can find as one record, and produces a structured, non-diagnostic review — what recurs, in the teachers' own words, and what was looked for but not found.
How it works
Photos or files, any years, any school. The system tells you whether they support a Part or a Whole Record review.
It groups comments by meaning and weighs how strongly and how often things were said. It counts which teachers described it independently, tracks when it appears across the years, considers look-alike explanations — and reads what was never said. One fixed method, derived from published research. The AI finds and quotes; it never freewrites about you.
A PDF, yours to keep: what recurs, what was looked for and not found, limits named. A re-run code is emailed to you, and your documents are deleted after processing.
The idea
One teacher saw one year. Another saw a different subject. Another wrote after school began demanding more independence. Read one at a time, the reports are anecdotes. Read together — by meaning, from primary through secondary — they can become a record.
"A bright child who finds it hard to settle to written work."
"Work is often left unfinished, though she understands the material."
"Rarely completes longer tasks without reminders."
Three teachers, in three different years, independently describe sustaining written work as the hard part — in different words, with more emphasis in the later reports than the earlier ones. That is a pattern the record can support. What it means in a life is not the record's to say — that part stays yours.
And when a record is clean, the review says that plainly. A consistent record without these patterns is a real answer too — with one honest caveat: a quiet record can also reflect a child working very hard to hold things together. Clinicians call that pattern masking.
A fictional record, for illustration.
An ADHD-relevant pattern isn't one remark. It's the same observation surfacing again and again, in different handwriting. Every comment is read against twenty-five defined reading targets:
Every target is defined in writing, grounded in the structure of DSM-5 and DIVA-5.0 and in published research on how ADHD presents differently. Consistency-tested, not clinically validated: the same records produce the same review, and every quote is checkable in your own reports.
Why people do this
Not "I think I was always like this" — an organised record of what recurred, when, and in whose words. Whatever you choose to do next, you're no longer working from memory alone.
"Must try harder", "doesn't listen", "so much potential" — read together across years, comments like these can turn out to describe something other than character. The review may give you words for something felt but never named; whether it fits is yours to recognise.
If the record supports patterns, you see exactly which ones, carried by quotes. If it doesn't, the review says that plainly — and is honest about what a quiet record can and can't settle.
What you receive
Not a score. Not a diagnosis. Not a generic ADHD summary. The structure and safeguards are fixed — the substance is entirely your record: the only words drawn from your documents are the teachers' own, quoted verbatim with their year and subject.
Every entry carries one of these four statuses — the exact labels the review uses. And where the records can't speak to something at all, the review says that plainly too. No scores, no percentages, no verdicts about you.
Built on research
Memory of childhood fades and reshapes itself. School reports don't: they were written as it happened, year after year.
And teachers wrote with no question in mind. Unlike a questionnaire — answered about yourself, today, knowing what it's getting at — nobody knew what those comments might one day be read for.
A 2024 study in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Waltereit et al.) examined German primary-school reports — from 1,197 people diagnosed with childhood ADHD and 656 without — and found that what teachers wrote could be read systematically for the recognised signs of childhood ADHD. The striking part: what the reports did not say mattered. Missing comments on attention, calmness and self-control marked the ADHD group.
The principle WholeRecord is built on
"Childhood evidence is essential to ADHD assessment across the lifespan… School reports are among the few written records that span the developmental window in which the pattern first becomes visible. Reading those reports systematically — for recurring observations across years, for the language patterns that appear when the pattern is present, and for the absences that are also informative — is genuinely useful work that is rarely done."
This principle is supported by:
It is the discipline an engaged clinician would apply to the same evidence — applied systematically, beyond any individual's practical scale. That is the gap WholeRecord was built to close: in the clinicians' own words above, this is work "that is rarely done".
Every reading is grounded in the structure of DSM-5 and DIVA-5.0, and in published research on how ADHD presents differently — including the quiet presentations that are easiest to miss.
Consistency-tested, not clinically validated: the same records produce the same review, and no accuracy figure is claimed anywhere. What it asserts is checkable on its face — the quotes are in your reports, where it says they are.
The full research grounding — and what the method can't do →
School reports are part of a developmental picture — never the whole of it.
Who it's for
Wondering, waiting, or recently diagnosed — reading the reports that were written when it started.
When university suddenly asks more than school structure ever did.
Trying to understand what the reports keep saying — and what they never say.
WholeRecord is for adults (18+) reviewing their own school records, and for parents reviewing a child's record (ages 14–17, with appropriate consent). It doesn't diagnose anyone. It describes the record — never the person.
Why this exists
I spent over a decade working with data professionally. What I didn't expect was that during my own ADHD assessment, at 36, I'd find I had been sitting on the richest dataset of my life — in a box, in my parents' loft: my school reports.
The clinician asked for them. As she read, I asked what she was looking for. "Phrases that recur, repeatedly, between the ages of five and twelve." The clues had been there for thirty-one years, written in plain sight by teachers who had no idea what they were recording.
I built the tool I wish my parents had had. An evidence record like this might have changed the story I carried about myself — because what the teachers were describing may have meant something different all along.
That pattern had been there since I was five. Thirty-one years passed before anyone found it.
One early reader, after reading his review
"Reading through my report was thought provoking in a way that I didn't expect. It made me realise things I'd always thought but never been able to articulate. When I was young, I struggled to write things down as fast as everyone else. I just thought I was a slow writer. If something didn't interest me, I couldn't concentrate for more than a few minutes before my mind drifted, and I thought that made me lazy or weird… It's hard to describe a state of being, but reading this hit me like a tonne of bricks. There are clear patterns in those reports, combined with an internal feeling of knowing it to be true. I feel slightly less of a failure."
— Adam, 34
Pricing
Not sure which? Upload what you have — the system tells you which review your records can support.
Start with the reports you've found so far.
Both school stages read together — the full developmental record.
| Part Record | Whole Record | |
|---|---|---|
| The full searched-for set — found and not found | Yes | Yes |
| Verbatim teacher quotes, with year and subject | Yes | Yes |
| Limits named — what these records can't say | Yes | Yes |
| PDF yours to keep, re-run code included | Yes | Yes |
| School stages read together | One | Both, as one record |
| How the picture changed across the years — the developmental arc | — | Yes |
| The primary-to-secondary transition: patterns that only become visible when both stages are read together — a record that looks fine in primary and reads differently as demands increase | — | Yes |
Pay once; the review is yours to keep. And if you run a Part Record, find more reports, and decide to run a Whole Record later, your £39 counts towards it.
Privacy
These protections are built in:
Your documents are deleted after processing. We don't store your school reports — once your review is delivered, we hold nothing.
Your documents are processed only to produce your review — and never reach the company that makes the AI. That is a written contractual term.
Your reports are never used to teach or improve any AI system. They're read once, for your review, and that's all.
You don't sign up, so there's no account to secure. Everything is handled under Europe's privacy law (GDPR), inside Europe.
Paste documents into a general AI chat tool and they typically don't vanish — deleted conversations are often kept for up to 30 days, and on default settings can be used to train future models. WholeRecord's AI layer is enforced zero-retention: processed in the moment, stored by no one.
Most people don't — they're in lofts, parents' houses and school archives. Schools in the UK and Ireland must respond to record requests, and the guide covers exactly where to look, what to ask for, and your rights of access. Earlier years matter. Quiet years matter.
Open the report finder →Common questions
Start with whatever reports you can find. The review is honest about what they can and can't support.
Upload your reportsInterested, but not ready to upload?
Send me an email and I will pass on the report-finder guide when it is ready, and let you know what is new. Nothing else.