1970 British Cohort Study: Age 16, Sweep 4 Head Teacher Questionnaire, 1986

<p>The <em>1970 British Cohort Study</em> (BCS70) began in 1970 when data were collected about the births and families of babies born in the United Kingdom in one particular week in 1970. Since then, there have been nine further full data collection exercises in order to monitor the cohort members' health, education, social and economic circumstances. These took place when respondents were aged 5 in 1975, aged 10 in 1980, aged 16 in 1986, aged 26 in 1996, aged 30 in 1999-2000 (SN 5558), aged 34 in 2004-2005, aged 42 in 2012 and aged 46 in 2016-18. A range of sub-sample and supplementary surveys have also been conducted, and a separate dataset covering response to BCS70 over all waves is available under SN 5641, <em>1970 British Cohort Study Response Dataset, 1970-2012.</em></p> <p>Further information about the BCS70 and may be found on the <a title="Centre for Longitudinal Studies" href="http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/">Centre for Longitudinal Studies</a> website. As well as BCS70, the CLS now also conducts the NCDS series. <br> <br> <em>How to access genetic and/or bio-medical sample data from a range of longitudinal surveys:</em><br> A useful overview of the governance routes for applying for genetic and bio-medical sample data, which are not available through the UK Data Service, can be found at <a title="Governance of data and sample access" href="http://www.metadac.ac.uk/data-access-through-metadac/">Governance of data and sample access</a> on the METADAC (Managing Ethico-social, Technical and Administrative issues in Data Access) website.</p> The impetus behind the 1<span style="font-style: italic;">970 British Cohort Study: Age 16, Sweep 4 Head Teacher Questionnaire, 1986</span> survey, which was sent out to every school in Great Britain which anyone born in the target cohort sample week in 1970 was likely to be attending, was to find out more about the schools attended by cohort members, especially as many of the members were about to leave full-time education. This information was particularly important as the response by teachers to the main survey's 'Educational Questionnaire' (Document L) was disappointing, because of the widespread industrial action that year in protest against government educational reforms. The head teacher questionnaire achieved a slightly better response (4,592 pupils covered, as opposed to 3,760 for Document L).<br> <br> The head teacher questionnaires were not able to be keyed, documented and deposited at the time of the survey, due to lack of resources, but funding finally became available in 2004-05 to complete this task at the CLS.<br> <br> For the 5th edition (March 2017) a small number of primary identifiers (BCSID) have been changed to realign them to previous sweeps of data.<br> <br>