My inclination is to treat this as fiction, BUT the forum is totally moderated (posts do not appear without moderator approval) and in general appears very sober and a little sad (at least to someone like me who has been fortunate enough to have a relatively happy and trouble-free life). Did the moderators let this post through because they thought it an accurate account of those relatively far off days, or did they simply have no knowledge whatsoever of the topic and gave it the benefit of the doubt?
I have a friend who taught in English special schools in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and for the most part they seem to have been fairly happy places, given that the ‘pupils’ were somewhat constrained in their freedoms.