Prefects VS Hall Monitors | British VS American
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- Опубликовано: 22 июл 2023
- Today I sit down to chat with Heather about prefects in the UK and hall monitors in the US!
Sorry for the weird audio in this one; this is the final video where I use a convoluted audio setup of 2 shotgun microphones off axis with a "Mix Assist" to switch mics. It's a great setup when I'm sitting further away from my friend, but when so close, it falls apart hard. The video I shot with my mom a couple weeks back is actually my new audio setup for "collabs" and I'm much happier with the sound. I use an SM7B boomed out of shot which has a cardioid pickup pattern perfect for capturing 2 people sitting close of similar dialogue volume. Next week's video actually features 3 different mics in 8 different setups (I had a lot of fun with it) including some experiments with my new lavalier recording setup. I'm pretty happy with how that one's turning out.
Anywho, thanks for reading up on some little technical difficulties I've had :) I hope you enjoy the video regardless x
Also today's video was guest edited by Luke Cutforth! :D THANKS LUKE / luke
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If you're new to my channel and videos, hi! I'm Evan Edinger, and I make weekly "comedy" videos every Sunday evening. As an American living in London I love noticing the funny differences between the cultures and one of my most popular video series is my British VS American one. I'm also known for making terrible puns so sorry in advance. Hope to see you around, and I'll see you next Sunday! :)
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Heather makes me feel like I went to a rough school, we had no time in between classes, no prefects, no lockers, no school houses I just went to a London state school aha we didn’t get funding for these things like my school was owned by g4s lol
G4s does prison transport. Maybe explains things? Lol
@@fifinoir if people misbehaved they made them help the g4s people pick up litter and clean the school lmao 😭
I went to a state school in inner London and we had lockers. The problem was that for most days of the week the lockers were in a completely different building to the ones we had lessons in so we rarely used them. At college, which was in outer London, we had lockers but we had to share. The lockers were on the same floor as most of our lessons so we used them.
Between classes we had no time between classes, we did not have lockers, or prefects. But by "house" I assumed she meant a "Form" or "Tutor" class that you belonged to? Or is that also not as common as I thought it was.
@@autistickakarot I think she meant like named houses because I think every school does some kind of form/tutor group just for ease of registering but I have mates that went to schools where people were also separated into named houses
My school experience was very different to Heather's 😂
Much larger school, no 'hall monitors', no lockers, it took about 8 minutes to get from one end of the school to the other! 😂 I love hearing the experiences of others, though! Amazing how things can differ from one place to the other, in such a small country!
No interviews for prefects either. Teachers decided who they wanted...and that was that!
In my school (neither in the UK or USA) we had a 10 minute break between each class. Our classes were 45 minutes so each period with the break were just under an hour.
@@LadyMephistophelesSame here, except the break was 15 minutes - enough to fill in a page or two from an exercise book set as homework, or learn spelling list for a test or a times table in primary school.
Seriously my school had a locker room for two years & when it went. We still had some lockers just in hallway
My secondary school didn't have hall monitors/prefects or similar either. I'm pretty sure prefects were only for the posher schools, not a common comprehensive school like mine. It did have one set of lockers that the 5th year kids (year 10 these days) could use if they wished, but they were usually broken so never actually got used.
When the chosen prefects lined up to buy their badges, (yes, buy them), I joined the queue and purchased one for £2, it took 6 months for the teachers to notice they hadn’t picked me, but that was a sweet 6 months of not having to be outside at lunchtime in the winter and I could tell younger kids to stop running in the hall.
They forced you to go outside at break and lunch? Staying inside was always an option at the school I went to. We tended to play cards or a football game with tuppences and a penny using rulers.
@@andyleighton3616we could only be inside at breaks if it was raining heavily, a bit of drizzle didn't count.
@@ericathompson8146 MY nose is twitching in remembrance of my school.
Now excuse me I need to go excorcise those memories back to the hell from whence they came.
It always boggles my mind when I get reminded that not every country has a proper break between each class, in Finland we had a 15-minute break between every class (lunch break was 30-45 minutes depending on which lunch you had), and then in my high school the first break of the day was a bit longer because the teachers would have staff meetings during it and the students would have a homeroom meeting once a week (on thursdays in my school) to go over the stuff that was happening in school in the near future. My homeroom teacher always took forever to go over the list and I was soooo annoyed bc I just wanted to go play some cards with my friends but instead I was stuck listening to him explain stuff from a list I could've easily read over in like three minutes myself.
Suomi mainittu 😆 but Yes I too am a Finn and can indeed confirm that that was the case in my childhood as well. However I recently graduated as an Early Childhood Education Teacher in Rauma and have seen schools where kids have to nowadays eat in 20 minutes, which is kinda horrifying in my option.
We didn't formally have time between lessons. However, it was still something teachers would allow for. They would only get annoyed if students were excessively late, or a few students were later than everyone else. Often, they were more annoyed with their teaching colleagues who allowed their lessons to overrun.
I went to high school in South Wales (UK) and we had at least 15 minute breaks between each lesson and 45 minutes for lunch.
5 lessons a day
Lesson 1 8.45 - 09.45
Lesson 2 10.00 - 11.00
Lesson 3 11.15 - 12.15
Lunch 12.15 - 13.00
Lesson 4 13.00 - 14.00
Lesson 5 14.15 - 15.15 (end of day)
(Roughly 450 students per year)
I also went to school in Finland: 15 minutes for lunch because the dining room was too small for all the students so kids were fed in two lots. Teachers did not have daily meetings and students didn't have homeroom teachers, never mind homeroom meetings. But I went to school in the era when ink pens with cartridges and blotting paper, the first users of electronic calculators and owning a *very expensive* digital watch with a black screen and blocky, red light emitting diode numbers was an awe- inspiring.
I have to ask: what kind of cards? Are we talking standard playing cards, or more Magic the Gathering? 😁
My secondary school had 1500 students and we all had the same lunch period. The way they handled it is that entrance to the dinner hall was staggered. Say year 7 go in at 1, year 8 at 1:10 etc. There was a different timetable for each day to make it fair for who gets in first.
We had lunch all at same time but I’d say the majority bought their own lunch in from home. So while there were queues at the canteen and if you did go there you’d be in the queue a while, if you brought lunch you’d just go to a classroom with you mates or out on the playground to eat.
@@CulturePhilter for us if it was a day you get in first then you had dinner but if you were last you brought your own because hardly anything would be left
My secondary school also had about the same amount of kids with the same lunchtime, except my school had (and still has) 2 canteens plus the hoffi coffi room for sixth formers. So, about half the school has lunch in Forge and the other half has lunch in Griffin. Then at break you just go to whichever canteen you feel like.
Every time I watch Evan’s videos, American films and sitcoms make that little bit more sense. It always confused me why they were just carrying their books around in High School Musical, now I know the reason, and honestly, as twisted and American as it is, it makes sense 😂
We have lockers in the UK, but I feel like it’s a more recent American influence. I just used it for my PE kit and occasionally my DT folder in GCSE, but if you already had everything in the bag that you always carried around, it was rarely that useful
I agree that it's comparatively new to have lockers in UK schools. They were introduced in my school after I had already been there several years. Honestly I don't think I used mine a lot because I'd just got used to carrying everything
My school had them, but they were in a very inconvenient place and you had to pay for them, so no one used them
I'm old, I left school in 95 and we had lockers then, I returned to the same school to teach about 8 years later and they no longer had lockers. I imagine it depends on the head teacher. None of my daughter's schools had lockers.
We had them at my secondary that I joined in 2001 and they looked pretty old and knackered at that point!
Our school had lockers but no one except y7s really used them and yeah it was mainly for pe kits, as we got older people got braver and realized they could just not bring kit 😂
I was a milk monitor in my Primary school in Wales in the 70’s, it was my role to bring into my classroom the free school milk bottles and to pierce each bottle top with a straw and hand them to my class mates
Milk monitors were a thing when I was in primary school, the milk wasn't free anymore by that point tho lol
I went to a fairly typical British comprehensive school and I have literally never heard of any of this! We just had prefects and that’s it. They were just picked at random by the teachers each year and nobody really gave it much thought. Did Heather go to a grammar school or something?
Nope. It really depends on the head of the state school you went to. My school had houses before I joined then got rid of them with my head.
@@MsPeabody1231 they got rid of your head!? 😄 sorry.
You mean you didn’t have a voting system and had to run a campaign if you wanted to be head boy or girl?
@@siloPIRATE nope! We never even had a head boy or girl, all prefects were equal. Running a campaign and voting sounds very American to me
@@rgp1989 that’s what we had at my secondary s school. The fact was a grammar school may have been the cause of that. I think we had prefects, but I don’t remember seeing any.
My primary school definitely had prefects and if I remember right you had to choose to be one (I was one). You got black jumpers as opposed to the normal gray ones
My school didn't factor in times to get between classes, at all, and the teachers wouldn't let you leave early and complained if you were late. As for perfects, I was one in year 13. For my school, we applied around Easter in year 12, interviewed and had been told who the new perfects were before the old perfects left so that we could talk to the one we were taking over from and get an idea of what was required and we stepped in once they left after their exams
I always found the having time in between to get to classes mad, in Ireland your schedule is just 1 class after the other (starts straight away once bell goes), and the next lesson teaching starts like 1 minute or 2 later because the teacher sets stuff up while all kids get their items out. But you still are expected to be at that class straight away.
Sounds like my experience in Scotland.
I had the same in England
My prefect badge was a different colour to everyone else's, I don't know why. I would tell the younger kids it meant that I had the authority to instantly give out detentions if they were messing around. It wasn't true but it worked every time!
We didn't have to apply to be a prefect, we were chosen by the teachers.
we were chosen by our readers teachers as well
what if you were chosen but didn't want the job? could you decline? or did you have to do it?
Definitely can't have people "messaging around". Actually for a typo it makes more sense in this day and age. You could easily waste a whole day at school "messaging around".
@@abcdefgherz I don't think that it ever came up! I certainly didn't know that I had been chosen, it came as a surprise. You simply had your name read out during a school assembly and collected your badge.
@@rocketrabble6737 You certainly can't have kids messaging around! As you said, for a typo it's strangely rather more apt nowadays.
I never applied to become a prefect, but was made one anyway. If I remember rightly though, it was quite common. Like maybe 1 in 3 of the top year students were prefects, and it was almost entirely based on whether you were the sort of student who got in trouble a lot. The head boy was coincidentally the deputy headmasters son. Teaching everyone about corruption and nepotism from an early age.
one of my secondary schools in the UK had a sort of hall pass system. they locked all the bathrooms in the school except one during classes, and if you wanted to go during lessons you had to get a little form filled out in your school planner by the teacher. then you'd go to the one open bathroom, which had a teacher outside it who was also running inclusion (the room where misbehaving students go if they're not allowed in class). you had to hand the planner over to the teacher who checked you had the necessary permissions, and kept your planner while you used the bathroom. only one student was allowed in each bathroom at one time (so one boy and one girl), so that students couldn't meet up in the bathroom during class. seems a bit overkill looking back at it, and i went to two other secondary schools, both of which just let students use whatever bathrooms without needing signed permission. it was also incredibly annoying when you had a class at the other end of the school, as you had to walk all the way across school just to use the bathroom, despite there being one much closer.
how many kids soiled themselves while waiting for all that rigmarole? wow Also this is really great system to have at secondary when girls have their periods.. NOT
I work in an all boys schootool where we are looking at locking toilets during lessons. It's got to the point where too many students are going to the toilets to vape. It's really annoying when they accidentally set off the fire alarms.
My school started locking the toilets. The deputy locked me in once
Actually yes some British schools DO have lockers. I had a locker at school. There weren’t enough for everyone in the school so only the younger years and most trusted people in the school were allowed one. I was trusted with one. However they weren’t very big so I mostly used it to store my sports/PE kit in or small things that I needed EVERY day.
we had them when i was in year 7 but never saw the point - like if i have science in period 2 and or in period 3 with 5 minutes in between how am i supposed to run across the school every time to get my bag? it’s stupid
@@circe2258 most people just used their lockers to either store their PE kit so they didn’t have to carry it around all day. PE was usually just after break or lunch and in your form room/building so was easy to go grant it then go to PE. OR as it was I. Your form building/room people would store things that they wanted to keep at school instead of taking home every day or put their lunch in instead of Cary their lunch bag around all day or keep things in for after school clubs. It wasn’t used to keep stuff in for the school day. They were only half the size of the lockers you see in American movies. As I said I just stored my PE kit in mine.
So I went to a secondary school in Manchester that was actually pretty big compared to Heather's and more towards Evan's side of things. We had about 300 students per year and if I remember correctly we had 6 periods, broken up by one shorter 15 minute break in the morning and one 35 minute lunch break for all students. We did have lockers and I think we did have a prefect system for which you had to apply and I think it was just for year 11s, though it could've been open to year 10 as well. I don't recall them ever doing too much from what I remember, and they certainly didn't run any assemblies.
Additionally, all the students were sorted into forms. These were basically registration groups at the start of the day and they were meant to do activities and such with your form tutor (who was just a random teacher who was assigned that form), but whether the forms did depended on the form. When I first joined the forms were grouped into houses, and each form had a few people from each year. From year 8 onwards they scrapped that and each form was all one year group.
This seams more like what my school was like in Scotland
Ditto in West Yorkshire
mine was exactly the same
birmingham here
My school is 300 per year 1500 kids altogether, all on one lunch. Have prefects but they just have meetings and help tour parents and others around school. No lockers sadly.
We used to have houses and house forms but scrapped it the year i arrived to ur type of form
The same in Nottingham but no lockers and no houses.
My school (in the UK) did actually have a hall pass kind of thing, there weren't kids checking them, teachers would check if they bumped into you, and it was only in secondary school not primary
I love this content. Heather is a delight, I love listening to her explanations. This was a lot of fun to watch.
That Head Girl joke was MAD lmfao
Infants and juniors you only had one teacher. So only in secondary school you had to go to different classrooms.
Never mind whole class detentions, we once had a whole SCHOOL detention (British school). Someone kept setting off the fire alarm and the teachers didn't know who so we were all put in detention in the school hall (but only for 15 minutes).
My school just kept everyone 10 minutes later. Think I said ok I take 10 minutes out of your lessons then. Even tho he didn’t teach me. I just made him late for his lesson once. With another year group. We never got told who pulled it tho which I found odd as ccctv was in every hallways
I think my parents complained to the school about detentions as I would miss the bus and take about an hour to walk home, by which time mum was in panic mode!
The reason I was told we had a hall pass in elementary school wasn't related to trusting the kids like it was in middle school. It was more about having a visual for kids to understand waiting their turn. So if kid A had to go the bathroom, they'd get the one (some classes had 2) hall pass, then if kid B asked to go to the bathroom, teacher could say you have to wait until the hall pass comes back, that way they didn't have several kids going to the bathroom at once and getting distracted talking in there or playing around
Our bathrooms in elementary school were in the classroom. I think they gave out hall passes for us so that any one walking by the student could check and help them find their way to their destination, even if the kid couldn't read the pass themselves.
When I was at school, we had desks with lids. You kept all your books in the desk :) Bear in mind that I left school in 1973...
Me too and kept coats in cloakrooms, I was shocked when my daughters started secondary school and had to carry everything around all day . There were very few lockers and were expected to carry their books in a bag, backpacks weren’t very popular then.
I went to two secondary schools, both in the north of England. The first we didn't have lockers (as far as I recall), and we'd have to have all our books for the day in a bag. Lots of separate buildings on the campus, some of which were smaller porta-cabin like things toward the edges of the school. The uniform was trousers/skirt, shirt, and school tie, with optional school jumper.
Second school (after moving home) I remember being more 'Harry Potter' (back before Harry Potter was a thing). Uniform was more more strictly enforced, and in addition to what the old uniform had, I had to wear a blazer as well. The school and its buildings were older and more connected, and being older felt more like the hallways look in Harry Potter than it did at the first school. It might have had lockers, but if it did I don't strongly remember them.
I don't remember there being prefects at either school, and I was certainly never one, but I left the first school after the second year, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second one had them. Both schools were big enough to need at _least_ 5 minutes to get between classes.
I went to school in New Zealand. None of my primary school friends went to my high school, there was about 10 or so high school choices and most kids went to specialised schools that were further away. Mine was the closest at the time at 30mins commute but some people travelled over an hour each way for the high school they chose. We had prefects too, and houses but only in high school, we ran assemblies too as each house had their own assemblies. And one lunch time for everyone. We had music passes which let us out of our regular class for our individual music lessons. I had two individuals a week so I got out of half a class twice a week. We also had multiple buildings as our school grew quickly, some buildings were much newer than others, we also had carpark classrooms which were just containers, it was so bad. I remember always being cold in the winter in the maths block because it was the oldest and the heaters didn't work
When I went to school in NZ we called it college now high school. I went to a private primary school, so we had prefects and houses, etc. Were they really containers or just “demountable” temporary classrooms that seemed to be permanent?
My son's secondary school has a no bag rule. They have to collect books for p1 & p2 for registration, replace with p3 & p4 during break. Pick up P5 at lunch. All lessons seem to be doubles in secondaries now. We used to have 8 or 9 single lessons in the olden days (although some would be doubles).
Weird, most of my university lectures are 50 minutes - a better length of time to be able to focus on a single thing.
@FerretKibble a double lesson is probably that. 1 hour to include moving around time. I used to have single lessons though. 30 minute PE lesson seems mad now. Usually cross country, which none of my kids have to do, lucky sods. My girls occasionally get proper doubles due to timetabling, so 2 hours of a lesson. The teachers usually give them a break half way through though.
US here, went to a Technical high school. 4 classes per day (1, 3, 5, 7 schedule for odd days; 1, 2, 4, 6 schedule for even days) 1st period was 1 hour long. The others were 1½ hours long, and ½ hour for lunch.
My school drew students from the entire county. There was an 85% avg REQUIRED to apply to the school for freshman year. I made it in for sophomore year since I got in trouble in my previous school. 😅
Tech areas were hands-on learning for things like Drafting, Auto repair, child care, law enforcement, etc... and my area, Graphic Arts.
Seniors were allowed to leave during the last periods (6&7) in order to go to work, but the job HAD to relate somehow to your Tech area to earn your required credits.
It was fun there - I miss my teachers and the friends I got to see every day (who are now scattered across the country).
My locker in my US high-school was in the arts wing near the auditorium and far from the academic classrooms . We had 5 minutes in between so I basically had to carry everything I needed for my first 4 classes until lunch. We had 3 lunch times but they were fifth period a, b and c. Lunch was 30 minutes and your 5th period academic class was an hour instead of 50 minutes like the rest.
Great fun! Loved vlog.
Harry Potter gave me the idea that prefects were an extension of the teachers’ disciplinary role.
absolutely love the videos with heather in:)
Very Interesting..Great to see Heather.
Gosh, bought back memories. My school had about 270 pupils. We had five houses. Each house had a house master and a junior house master, the boarding houses also had a house mother who would be the wife of the house master, they both lived in. Each house had its own prefects.
Each year had two forms, each form had their own form room. Your form kept that room every year. For most lessons Masters would come to the form room to teach. Pupils would only change rooms for labs or sports.
We had seven periods a day, 4 on Saturday morning, with matches, cross country run, rehearsals, detentions or that sort of thing on Saturday afternoon. Most classes were double periods.
Lunch was an hour and a half. Relatively formal, sat down, tables of 8 except for high table. You had your own allocated seat. Each table has six pupils from your class and two plebs (plebians, first formers). They would wait table, bringing each course from the kitchen, clearing table etc. Obviously top table were served by staff.
I was a prefect. My headmaster chose me because I was 6’5” and was useful as a bouncer lol
For reference, I'm American. We had a whole day of watching movies and playing games (assembly, crosswords, two whole movies) for Veteran's Day. We invited veterans from our community to come in and we usually had a couple of speeches as well as band and choir performances. We also had a full day off every year for our 'olympics' where each year (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) competed against the other in a large variety of events from layups to the 'shoe race' where you had to take off your shoes which were mixed by teachers at one end of the gym, race from the opposite side, find your shoes, and race back to win. It was a day of fun and laughter among all classes. We also held a cookout on this day where we ate hot dogs and burgers. Parents and the community were invited to join as well.
I was dragged into doing tours of the school for perspective parents when I was in year 13 with another student as we had been in the school since we were 11 and we had a free study period. We had been prefects in year 11, but we had some time to show parents around, the study could wait. It was a good teaching in time management if nothing else
I didn’t have to interview to be a prefect at my school, I just filled in a form on why I wanted to be one, and then they announced who has been chosen in assembly. In my school prefects got to wear a tie in their house colour too, so I wore a blue tie. All other students wore black ties with greenish yellow stripes.
The head of the prefect program went off sick for the second half the year so we didn’t actually do a lot for that part, but in the first half of the year we had various jobs like running the stationary shop, looking after classes when it was raining during break time and they had to be indoors, and giving tours to visitors.
The different lunch periods and free/study hall electives brought me back. My senior year, I got the latest lunch period, and had actually gotten enough credits to graduate the previous year (minus the mandatory senior-level classes), so I ended up just taking two free periods after lunch. I got out around noon everyday.
Love the video, more Heather please
My Upper School had the 5 periods, but there were 2 lunch periods, one for the lower years, one for the upper years, there was about 2000 students in my school overall, this was during the times where my borough was split into Lower, Middle and Upper school, that changed the year after I left to just have Lower and Upper school so there is likely a lot more students there now.
There was never a whole class getting in trouble for one person getting in trouble, only the people who did wrong were punished.
We didn't have anyone patrolling the areas outside of classes except for teachers who were also moving around from place to place, so no prefects.
We had houses but they really didn't mean anything outside of if you did any school events, which no one had to do.
Assembly was very rare and mostly just the teachers gathering students to have people outside of school talk to us, mostly just events which have happened like students going missing or things about student safety.
The school had a building for every 2 subjects, except Science, that had a whole building to itself. It had a public gym attached to the PE building, a Dining building where the Sixth form students ate upstairs. A History Building with a study hall, a very small Music Building, a Computer and Religious Education Buidling, a Geography and English building, a Media building, an Arts and Language Building, and a Maths Building which used to share with Science before science got a new fancy building, and there were some temporary buildings set up out back which were basically permanent, like the classroom containers she talked about.
in my school, you applied for prefect, but the job was mostly make sure the youngers are okay at break and lunch etc. Then the head girl team (single-sex school ugh) had more of the important roles. So there's head girl, deputy, and then other deputies with particular responsibilities, such as health and wellbeing, community engagement, transition for younger students etc, and then there would be a house captain team for each house which would co ordinate house events so there'd be a main house captain, then deputies for charities, sport, drama, music, community engagement etc. Edit, for these, you apply, interview and are chosen by the headteacher/your head of year, but for the councils, e.g. school council, sixth form, sport, health and wellbeing, pastoral care etc, you are elected by your form
I think high schools in the western US are a bit different than on the east coast. The most class periods I've ever seen is like 7. The schools i attended and where I taught all went to lunch at the same time. I did know of schools where there was more than one lunch period. The elementary school where I taught, lunches were staggered, each grade went to lunch at a different time, but they overlapped. The differences are amazing.
My south-west London very traditional all-boys high school in the 1980s had about 800 pupils in eight houses. We all had lunch at the same time. Starting at 13, the years were named Forth, "Remove", Fifth, "Transitus" (Lower Sixth) , Sixth (Upper Sixth). We had no Prefects (so no Prefect badges), but each house had a Head and Deputy Head Boy and there was a Head of School, all of whom got to wear the "House colours" (the House badge) or "School colours" (the School badge) stitched to the breast pockets of our jackets (ordinary boys had no badges on their uniforms). Sports were rugby, cross country, cricket, tennis, athletics (no football), though we also had Fives courts and, if you were favoured sixth formers, the headmaster would allow you to use his croquet lawn and invite you to his Mahjong club.
I taught at a very large junior school in London (junior = key stage 2/years 3-6/age 7-11) which did divide up lunch break. It was around 120 kids per year when I started there, and about 150 when I left. They originally had two lunch periods, 12-1 and 12.30-1.30, but that included break. So at 12pm, around 240 children went into the playground, and were called in to the lunch hall class by class to eat. As soon as a child finished eating, they went back outside, and once there was enough space a new class got called in. Between 12.30 and 1pm all approx 480 kids were either in the lunch hall or outside. Once the school grew to around 600 kids, they changed lunch break into 4 slots, one per year group, so that all 600 kids were never all out at the same time because the playground was getting too crowded - I think then it was 11.45, 12, 12.30 and 12.45, though I was teaching one of the year groups that kept their old slot so I'm not 100% sure what the new times were.
There were just under 1,000 in the secondary school I attended. Houses were the vehicles by which boys were forced to do competitive team games. They had House Prefects appointed by the Housemaster, with jurisdiction over only house members. School Prefects had universal jurisdiction. Some of them were promoted to Senior Prefect, the difference being they could dole out more severe punishments. There was also a School Captain, and a Second Prefect (a deputy). These two organized the duties of the School Prefects. All these were appointed by the Headmaster. They were all sixth-formers (17-yr-old +). All prefects' sole responsibility was to police the school and punish those guilty of breaking rules. Teachers did not generally bother with this outside their lessons.
We live in a weird place in the UK with a 3 tier education system. You went to First School (Y1-4), Middle School (Y5-8) and then High School (Y9-6th). At Middle School we had about 4 classes per year group. The Middle School was joined onto the High School, which had 8 classes (4 from another Middle). There was 1 dining hall for both the Middle and High school so we had 4 lunches each with 2 year groups. You would show your student planner to get in for dinner. Dinner ladies would make sure everyone was okay at dinnertime. When I went up to High School it all changed - they switched to a Primary & Secondary model with 1 massive school for both the Middle Schools and the High School in the town. Here we had 3 lunches, each with 2 year groups still and the same system applied. Never had lockers at any of my schools, nor anyone monitoring corridors. 5 minute rule in Secondary School, if you weren't there 5 minutes after the lesson started, it was a late mark. 3 late marks = 45 minute after school detention.
In terms of numbers,
First School (1-2 classes per year group) 300 max.
Middle School (3-5 classes per year group (150 per year)) 600 max.
High School (6-10 classes per year group (300 per year)) 1000 max.
Sixth Form - 100 students
Heather must have went to a really small school - there are some rural in my county where First and Middle Schools have 10 kids in total. Most towns have very large schools.
We had Head Boy & Girl at Secondary School - they were in Year 13 and would do assemblies and posh things. Senior Prefects would be in Year 12 & 13. House Captains were the ones who ran the houses. Prefects were in Year 9 and were slaves. School Councillors were elected every year - one boy, one girl for each tutor group. They did the School Council where they pretended to give us a voice.
Heather is delightful. More please.
My high school was 1st form to 4th form (year 7-year 10). There were over 1,000 students. We had four 75 minutes periods per day. First period then a 20 minutes morning tea break. Second period then 60 minutes lunch. Third period with ten minutes break to get to fourth period. School was 9am - 3:30pm. We had seven lines for subjects so first day you do your A, B, C, D lines and then the next day you would do your E, F, G, A lines and so on. Maths, English, Science, PE were compulsory then you selected your other lines from Art, Music, History, Languages, Home Economics, Textiles, Woodwork, Metal work, or Tech drawing.
Fifth and sixth form was a separate school were you selected majors and minors that were either tertiary or accredited level depending on whether you wanted to apply for university or not. You had to do a minimum of three majors and two minors but you could do more. A major was five units and a minor was three units. There were no compulsory subjects.
I went to school in a small town in the proper North East of the UK. We had no lockers in any school, you carried a backpack with all of your stuff for the lessons you had that day, including a PE kit if you had it that day.
We had 5-6 lessons a day (how on earth do you learn anything squeezing 9 lessons in per day?!).
Each year group was split into about 4-6 form classes or 'tutor group' with around 20-30 kids per class, in middle and high school. First school was only 1 class per year but our town had 1 high school, 2 middle schools and 6 first schools.
Middle school was the only school with houses (like Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw etc) and we had a house vice captain for each year and one overall head captain for each house. They were chosen by the teachers. No application or voting. We got house points for good behaviour or doing well in specific things and we competed together with our house on sports day.
Detention was given individually, not to the whole class because of one person.
I also think we had about 5-10 minutes between each class to get to the next minus first school because obviously we stayed in the same room all day.
The day started at 9 and ended at 3.10.
First school we had 3 breaks including dinner, middle school 2 including dinner and high school only had dinner.
Everyone went for dinner at the same time.
I've been out of school 17 years now so it's obviously changed a lot since then too!
So, year 1-6, I went with the same class. The same 24 classmates. We just changed classroom every year we moved up, and the teachers went to the classroom rather than we going to them. About 100-150 kids in the school. About 2-3 classes before lunch and 2 classes after lunch, with 5-30 minutes breaks between classes. And we got our own space for stuff in the classroom. Basically only leaving our classroom for gym, lunch, break, and... shop? Crafts? Woodworking in one classroom and sewing in another.
In year 7-9, new school, new class, now four classes in the same year, residing in their own corridors. About 300 kids in the school. And we went to different classrooms in the corridor depending on what subject we had on the schedule. And we now had lockers in the corridors. No "home" classroom.
Year 10-12, this is our "highschool". We pick a program based on our grades from year 8 and 9. Some programs lead directly to a profession, like electricians, mechanics, chefs etc. Some lead to higher studies, like University.. And some... just lead to you having a passing grade so you have the bare minimum to apply for random jobs or job schools. Now the lockers were all in a big central area on the ground floor, as depending on your program (and electives) you may have classes in all ends of the school. Still about 2-3 classes before lunch, and 2-3 classes after lunch. Better to have a long math session, have the teacher explain the new section, and work on it in class to make sure you can ask then and there if there is anything you dont understand.
What else... oh! We adress teachers by their first name, unless their last name lends itself well to a nickname, all the way from 1st grade to University.
Yeah, I think that pretty much covered my experience.
Guess the country?
I went to 2 high schools; 1st had no lockers, all boys and extremely rough. 2nd school, we had lockers, BUT WE DID NOT HAVE TIME BETWEEN CLASSES!! "Why are you late?" "I had to cross the school."
Was in a state school, and the only students that had lockers were 6th formers! To be fair, years 7-11 didn’t need much to have to carry, but years 12-13 had their school laptops and books to carry, so it was easier to let them drop off stuff. The 6th form at my school had lockers in the 6th form area, and classes in different parts of the whole school. It was fun when you'd have to go through the younger students to get to classes, and not having to queue outside the classroom to be let in by the teacher 🤣 plus, it was fun having an hour, maybe 2, free during the school day that you could spend in the common room, catching up with fellow classmates and/or working on homework/revision 👌 as a 6th former, you could also nip out of school on dinner through the main entrance and not be questioned!
The houses in years 7-11 were distinguished with colours of ties. We had blue, green, red, and yellow. The houses' names were named after greek gods. I was in Metis, the red one. Year 11s were the only ones that didn't have to wear a shirt and tie because they have a polo shirt. Every year had to wear jumpers. The only way to know what house they were in was because they had a pin button in the colour of their house to be worn on the jumpers. 6th formers wore their own clothes, and nobody got bullied if they were to wear scruffy clothes. In year 13, especially in my resit year 13, I wore suit like clothes - sime sort of shirt, black skirt or pinafore, tights and black flats. One time, when I was in hospital at the end of my resit, I only had my "uniform" to wear one day. I'd had a lumbar puncture, drank all of the jug of water I had, and so I took the empty jug to the nurses' station. They thought I was a doctor!
I was a 6th form (Yr12) prefect. The prefects in my secondary school were allocated a class in a lower year & had to be there for class registration in the morning. I was given a 1st Year (Yr7) class to look after. I became a link between the kids & the teacher. A person the kids could ask questions of or get help from if they had issues. I was given the post by the 6th form teachers & didn’t have to apply.
Re school houses, our houses were named after trees & used the consonant letters from the school name Chapter, C, H, P, T & R.
My brother was head boy of his secondary (Grammar) school. I believe he was awarded the headship by the teachers rather than through application.
We had lockers at secondary school but not at primary as in primary you stay in the same classroom all day. We carried our bags around school in secondary.
In Ireland we have student councils, these are elected by the students. These councils are headed by a head boy and/or head girl (depending if the school is mixed or not) who are in sixth year and these are usually appointed by the principal and two vice principals (one for each cycle) . The heads then select a committee and they oversee the student council. All the student councils are then linked to Irish Second-Level Students' Union (ISSU which is a play on words because that's how Irish people pronounce the word issue). General schools send 6 delegates to ISSU congress. Three from the committee and three elected by the student council.
At my school we had a few more responsibilities as prefects. I was a House Captain and this is how it worked for us. The hierarchy was similar to what Heather described but with us we had a School Captain, School Vice-Captain, a House Captain for each of the four houses. Each House Captain had three Vice-Captains. That made up the main Student Leadership Team (all of whom being from Year 13). We then had senior prefects who were Year 13 students who didn't have one of the aforementioned positions, and junior prefects who were Year 12s who would be gearing up to take over from us the next year. Then beyond that we had subject prefects who would do things specifically for a particular subject or department (so for example a Maths prefect might spend one lunchtime a week helping to run a drop in Maths clinic where they'd help students who were struggling with Maths). All of these positions would be applied for and interviewed for. The School Captain and vice captain would apply to the headmaster, the house (and house vice) captains would apply to the teacher who was Head of their house. The senior and junior prefects would apply to the student head of house who would make their own prefect team. And subject prefects would apply to the head of department for that subject.
In terms of responsibilities, the school captains would represent the school doing speeches and being present to meet with guests and governors. The house captains would run assemblies for the house and liase with their house for various things, but the major thing was organising charity days. Each house would have a charity day where we put on events to raise money for our chosen charity and this would be completely student led (whilst working with teachers just to run things by them). Additionally, all prefects would be required for open days and open evenings doing various duties (being the parking monitors for guests, signing in guests, doing tours, etc.). We'd also be there for parents evenings and other after school events (on a typical week I'd be at school until 8pm on two or three days a week due to the amount of events). We also had prefects who would be door monitors who would let people in and out of buildings if they were allowed to be (because at my school you weren't allowed in the buildings at lunch unless you had a club or were going to speak to a teacher). The teachers themselves would also have a rota of days that they'd patrol at break and lunchtimes to monitor behaviour and keep an eye on things.
Finally, we also had the Student Voice (which used to be called the School Council) where each form group would vote for one or two people to represent them in a forum where we could bring forward issues and concerns from the student body which would be fed back to the staff. This was the only properly voted for system, but when the applications for School Captain and Vice-Captain were done, all the Year 13 students got to put a scoring vote for the candidates (so you could give one candidate 5 points, another 4, another 3, 2 and 1) and these points were taken into consideration by the Headmaster as they made the decision of who to select.
Quite a lot of stuff there, but I found it all very fun and interesting to be part of. The main motivators to do it were the CV bonuses and the fact that all students had to do at least 50 hours of something called Creative Action Service (CAS) where you needed to have a spread of hours signed off for doing something Creative, something Active and something of Service as a way to get us all active as people. And prefecting and these sorts of things also helped in gaining house points which would go towards winning the House Cup (with all sorts of things gaining points). In my year as House Captain I ended up doing over 100 hours of prefecting!
I hope this was an interesting insight into one specific school experience (one steeped in a lot of tradition as I went to an almost 500 year old school).
My standard comprehensive UK school had lockers but they were in whatever classroom we registered in in the morning.
That meant you couldn’t go back to it between lessons because the room would be being used. So you could only access your locker beiginibh if the day before classes or at lunch, or after lessons finished for the day. So mostly just kept my packed lunch in there.
During the last term of my Lower Sixth year, and the first two terms of Upper Sixth, I was a prefect. I was responsible for the security of the Science Building during lunch, and had a place on the ground floor hallway, on a corner, and boys going clockwise had to pass behind me, and those going anticlockwise walked in front. My powers were limited to giving "lines" and an hour's detention. I had a gold shield badge designating my prefect rôle, a gold band on my blazer cuffs, and gold piping on the peek of my cap. In truth, though, it was just a lot of extra work with very few rewards, other than sherry with my house master on Friday evenings. 1:19 .
I went to school in Australia and we had all of the things described for English schools, including the hierarchy except we called them all “captains” and they were partly elected by students. In our case all the school captains would apply to be in the running, and there would be a student vote, but the vote was just a partial factor taken into account when teachers assigned the captain roles. For example when I was in my final year, the school music captain was originally considered for overall school captain, and apparently won the student vote, but after teacher interviews it was decided due to some personal things going on in her life (affecting her ability to commit to things) she would be given music captain role instead which only required her time during our 1 month music festival (and various concerts at other times). So it was kind of a mixture of teachers choice and student vote (but ultimately teachers had final say). It meant that captains tended to be the students more likely to command respect from younger peers (since they voted them in). We also had four houses just like UK schools.
At secondary school we had 6 periods, 2 different lunch times to fit everyone in. About 200 ish students per year. We had prefects chosen by teachers for overall behaviour/performance in school. We didnt have houses but we had our class group, 8 per year which competed against each other.
Went to a state primary and secondary in London.
My primary school was 2 classes of 26-30 kids each. You could be class captain for a term where you got a badge and helped the teacher hand out stuff for class.
My secondary school was pretty standard for our area and had 180 students per year split into 6 classes of 30. In our first term or two we had all of our classes as a form. After that we were streamed for English and Maths according to ability. By the time we got to GCSEs your forms were literally only where they took registration and the class you did PE with as we all had different schedules. In terms of set up our secondary school was from 8:45-3:30 and had 7 periods of 45 mins plus a morning, lunch and afternoon break. Some classes would be double periods and everyone had the same break times.
Our school was split across 2 buildings a few mins walk along the street so breaks had to be long enough for everyone to commute between buildings where required.
At my secondary school, I jokingly applied to become a prefect for the shits and giggles, had an interview with the headteacher and then became one 😭😭. I was so confused 😭
no one ever wanted to be a perfect , you would be bullied, where the following prefects corbyn johnson and trump
Year 9s at my school had their lunch halfway through 4th period, so we had 30 minutes of English or whatever, then 30 minutes of lunch, then 30 more minutes of English.
Prefects were chosen by the teachers at my secondary school but you had to apply to be the Head Girl. In primary school, you were also chosen by the staff. At my school you would be prefects in at the end of year 12 (from a couple of months before the year 13's study leave so they could do hand over) and through into year 13, but those in year 13 would become Head Girl and Vice Head Girl, House Captains and Vice House Captains, House Sport Captains and Vice House Sport Captain. I believe there was an overall Sport Captain too. All Head and Vices were appointed by the staff. Prefects were responsible for form time once a week where they had to lead the form in a form assembly on some topic, ensure that the form was involved in school events, lead on house assemblies, lead on house events etc. I personally was in charge of lighting and sound for all the assemblies, shows and events (but that was because I was the only person who knew how to use it - so wasn't actually a prefect or house anything because I had to be house neutral for house events (also because all my friends were moved into a different house (my year had 3 houses, all following years had 4) when we moved into sixth form and I was left in my original house and I rebelled by refusing to recognise any of the houses)).
We had 150 to 300 in my secondary school years, although we were unique even in our school because they thought the school was gonna go bankrupt so they tried out combining two campuses. It made our year a lot closer weirdly enough but the interesting side effect was that the older kids didn't mess with us because our year was so big so all our friend groups were also a lot bigger.
We didn't have prefects but we did have sports and house captains that got voted in (in my house no one really wanted to do house captain everyone wanted to be sports captain, so you might get chosen by the head of your house depending on how responsible they think you are) , sports captains would organize sports events and charity events related to sports while house captains mainly sorted out events for our houses (yes like in Harry Potter but with 6 instead of 4 houses). I always got chosen as house captain and just got to skip classes and basically just say yes or no to ideas, easy job.
Your ice cream social story reminded me of something though, in my first year at university I lived in one of the nicer accommodations on campus which was great on nights out but the problem was that a lot of people living there didn't know how to cook so the fire alarm would go off pretty often. We kept track of how long between fires and I think our record was about 13 days without a fire alarm going off, and that was on the lead up to Christmas.
I had a very different school experience than Evan. The US is a big place and has very different systems almost everywhere you go. In high school we had 6 periods, 2 classes then a break, another 2 classes then lunch(All students, no separate lunch periods), and finally the last 2 classes. We didn't have lockers, at the beginning of each year you would get your assigned books and then take them home and leave them there. If we needed our books during class there was a separate class set you could use. When I was in school the popular backpack brand was Jansport.
At my school, in the 70s, prefects were chosen by the teachers. I wasn't chosen. They got to wear a badge and could wear a special tie. (There were a lot of special ties besides the ordinary house ties, such as sixth form, half colours or full colours for sports - I got mine for chess).
We had 7 periods a day except for Wednesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays allowed extra time for games. Thursdays the extra period was was used for detentions, i.e. if you weren't in detention you were let out one period early.
We had just over 900 boys in the school. Just one sitting for lunch 8 boys to a table with a master or prefect at the head, and a special table for the other masters. I didn't go very often as I took a packed lunch and for several years helped set up and run the chess club.
We had small lockers with no locks, but kept most of our books in our form room desks.
The sixth form that I went to has subject prefects and had to apply to become one and some people (me being one of them) were picked without applying. The prefects would either help out in class during their free periods or run clubs during lunch or after school for two years until it was exam season in year 13 where the year 12's would apply to become prefects.
As far as other countries go, I taught 2nd and 3rd grade in Japan. We don't have hall passes, but it is pretty common to send kids off to go do something on their own if the teacher needs something or someone from another room and there are various duties assigned to students. For example, one (or two for younger grades) student in the class would be assigned to be in charge of taking kids to the nurse's office, so if a kid in my class felt sick or got hurt, I would ask them to escort the other kid to the nurse (unless it was something quite serious).
I went to a tiny tiny elementary and high school in Canada. The entire high school grade 7-12 had like 150-200 people total.
In our primary school school I don’t think we had prefects, but I do remember sometimes one of the two classes in the year would have to jobs stuff like hovering the hall carpets and taking letters to teachers from the front office. We had houses, too. The school consil was only a thing in year 6 and you’d have the heads, vices etc. I believe we all had lunch at the same time, school was smallish I guess. In secondary it was similar, no prefects, but we did have houses, no sure about heads, but they were a thing in sixth form. I think our lunches were all together for the first few years of secondary and then there were two later on. Interesting how different uk schools can be across the country.
The question of school size is interesting. The school district where I live in Rural Pennsylvania graduates around 80 kids a year (but due to demographics changes it is predicted to shrink to 50 kids in 10 years). My niece's class in suburban Maryland graduated about 350 this year and my nephew's class in suburban Orlando Florida graduated around 800 last year. So in the US, class size depends on Rural vs Suburban vs intercity and if the school district is based on a geographic area with in a county or the whole county. In Pennsylvania (which I am sure it is the same in N.J.) a county can have several school districts. But in Maryland and Florida the school district is the whole county. States with county based school systems tend to have larger class sizes because it is easier to consolidate studied to fewer buildings
I grew up in New Hampshire. My school district included 2 towns and I graduated with 119 kids. One school district next to me had 4 towns and like 350-400 kids per class. Another district just had 1 town and 4 high schools (our biggest city) and another had 9 towns feeding the high school and only had 69 kids graduate.
I went to comprehensive school in south wales and out of everything Heather mentioned, we only had prefects and head boy/girl. I can't remember if you had to apply or if they were just chosen by the teachers. The prefects all had the same role too, just to monitor the halls at lunch time to make sure kids weren't hanging around inside. We certainly didn't have lockers or houses...that sounds pretty posh🤣
My British Secondary school had around 400 students per year group. We did have staggered lunches, but the lunch period (as well a day start and end times) were staggered by the years.
We did have Houses, but to be honest they weren't used much - mainly for friendly competition. Sports, reading, attendance etc.
We didn't have Prefects formally but we did have students who were chosen on a case-by-case basis to do the things she described Prefects doing. For example I was selected to represent part of my year when HRH The Princess Royal came to visit.
We also had elected positions, in the School Councils. They speak to School Leadership on behalf of the student body representing their issues, and I believe they did have a small budget to get things done themselves.
Students never ran our assemblies at Secondary School, but we did at Primary school. The School Council (which was made of a boy and a girl from each year elected by their classmates) had like 1 assembly a week where we could choose the topic. It was generally presented by the Y6 councillors together with the teachers.
Both my schools were the rare type that were only one building. My Secondary school was pretty much brand new when I went so it has been designed to properly fit us all, and my Primary school was old but didn't really have any room to expand. My primary had pretty much the same building layout as it did when my mother attended.
My old High School in Franklin, NJ, was one of the last K - 12 schools when I attended (Sussex County). I was in the last senior class that graduated in 1982 before it became a grammar school only. We had several portable classrooms due to a lack of rooms for all of the classes. My World History Class was in one of them in Ninth Grade.
My school in North Wales, we had lockers and time between classes just to mov3 from one building to another etc, we had about 15 min brake from 10:00Am 10:15Am then lunch was 45 min registration for 15 min then afternoon classes.
We never had prefects, but we had ' buddies' but these were for year 11 to look after year 7s to check up on them.
We also had 3 school houses based on local area farm names.
Also we had like school student councilor where more like the American school your house class year elect you to be their voices with teachers etc.
I went to school during the 1980's in the UK and back then, like the US, there were 3 stages of schools, First School, Middle School and High School. I believe today it's just Primary and Secondary. If I remember correctly there were 4 years of First School. Then at Middle School the year system started back at 1 again and the classes were the year number plus the form teachers initials eg 1KM, Middle School also ran for 4 years.
High School then picked up where Middle School left off with the year numbering system (kind of), so the first year was called the Upper 4th. The following 2 years when we studied for GCSEs were called the Lower 5th and Upper 5th. So if you left at 16 after taking GCSEs you'd only done 3 years of High School. If you stayed on for A-Levels those 2 years were the Lower 6th and Upper 6th (also known as 6th form). Both Middle School and High School had houses (like Harry Potter!) and you were rewarded with house points etc, and both Middle and High school had Prefects, Head Boy, Head Girl etc.
Like Evan said it worked in the US, I think maybe 3 smaller First Schools merged together into 1 Middle School then maybe 2 or 3 Middle Schools merged into one High School, but I don't remember the class sizes really changing much. In First School there was only one class per year, then Middle School had 4 classes per year as I remember the first year block which was separate to the main school had 4 classrooms. Can't remember what we had at High School, I guess it would have to be more than 4. Although I think you had a choice of High School so it's possible not every Middle School merged with the same High School, it was a bit more mixed up than that. So you could get split up from friends if they chose (or more likely their parents chose) which High School they went to. It's all a long time ago now, as my Middle School years are some 40 years ago now!
At Middle School there was a similar lunch rota to Evan's except it was one big lunch break (an hour?) and the rota was the order in which the classes went to the canteen for lunch. It was on a sliding system so sometimes your class went first for lunch then as each day went by you moved one place down until your class was last to lunch. No-one was in lessons during this time it just meant sometimes you went straight from class into lunch then went outside to play for the rest of the lunch break. If your class was last then you went outside first then by the time you'd had lunch it was straight back to class. The only adult supervision you got were from the dinnerladies at this time of day. Don't think this system existed at High School as there was one room where you queued and picked up your lunch and 2 big rooms to sit in to eat your lunch.
So I went to 3 American high schools, 2 of which at the same time, and 1 Japanese high school. The first 2 high schools had 4 classes a semester, so you'd finish the class in a semester. There were other schools that did all 8 classes year round, so it took the whole year for you to finish one course. The 3rd high school I attended in the mornings before "regular" high school in place of my first 2 classes. Depending on who you asked, it was either a prep school or "the bad kids" school. It was definitely closer to being a prep school but the "bad kids" that got sent there did really well. It was actually pretty awesome so of course the state shut it down a few years after I graduated.
In Japan, it was similar to my regular high school except you didn't move between your classrooms. Instead, teachers moved and students stayed in place, except for math which some students had to move for.
Never had a whole-class detention, but at my UK primary school (ages 7 to 10) we did have a whole-class caning. A teacher's car had been vandalised and we wouldn't tell who did it, so the whole class were punished. Parents were fine with this btw, their philosophy was either 'you should have given them up', or, 'solidarity against authority' but in either case there was no thought of 'but my child was innocent!' Btw, talking about class sizes, my secondary school (ages 11 to 18) there were only about 300 pupils in the whole school. As for prefects, yes I was a prefect in secondary school (I was an ink monitor in primary school). Basically we were just the school 'Stasi'.
In my secondary school it was only years 7 to 11 when I was there. We had prefects, and I was chosen to be one! Nobody applied or had interviews, it was purely a teacher choice. We were picked near the end of year ten so we could begin when the year 11s were doing their exams. We got a prefect badge to wear in the colour of our school house (mine was gold) plus a special tie! (my school we all wore ties regardless of gender, and each tie had different colour stripes to correspond with your house). Prefects were expected to attend open evenings to represent the school, speak to prospective students, do tours etc. And then on a regular basis we had set days per week where it was our turn to do a specific job, like standing in a particular part of the school and making sure students arent loitering there (my school had a rule that unless it was raining torrentially, all pupils had to go outside during breaks and couldn't remain inside unless eating in the canteen/main hall). We didn't have prefects in primary school though.
So my school was a British international co-ed school which integrated Nursery, Reception, Primary, Secondary and Sixth Form. I think in total we had around 2000 people in total. It wasn't totally massive, but it was big enough that you had to hurry a fair bit if in Secondary you had something in the old Secondary block or the newer Arts block within five minutes. In between the two was the field, as well as the tennis courts/astroturf and basketball court. In Primary we only moved classes for IT and modern foreign languages, otherwise we were with the one teacher.
We had 4 houses, and in Secondary at least, each house consisted of 2 forms/homerooms per year group so (4x2x25 or so but less in 6th Form). We had a boys and girls team captain for each house class I think and basically they would be in charge of signing people up for Sports Day, Swimming Gala and Eistedfodd. Above them, there would be a teacher who lead the whole house. For each of these you could earn points for your house, which would be tallied up and totals shown in the last day assembly of the year. You could also earn points through merits, which were awarded based on excellent work or attitude etc.
Now for prefects/hall monitors. In Primary, in Year 6 you could volunteer to become a monitor for either the hall or the playground. I volunteered, and initially got hall monitor, which I found boring so became the Year 1 playground monitor. As for the prefects, it sounds pretty similar to what Heather described in her school, but our Year 11 prefects had different uniforms from us normies. Where the standard was a white polo with either blue trousers or a green skirt with white sneakers, prefects had either a blue or light green shirt, a tie and formal shoes. I think they also had a pin badge. In early Secondary, prefects were supposed to arrive earlier than the rest of the students and would be assigned to desks in the hallways to make sure people weren't hanging out in the classrooms - you had to write down where you were going, e.g. if you were going to read in the library. They also helped to organise charity fundraising events, whether it was our Mufti Day, various bake sales or one off dress-up days like Jeans for Genes. The teachers involved in the running of the prefects would often show favouritism towards them. Both my brother and sister were prefects AND also house captains. I think we had a Student Council, but I don't remember how it worked.
we have prefects in hong kong as well! but to my memory it was just the "good boys" (i.e. good grades, quiet in class etc) that would be chosen. although back in primary school i do remember some of the prefects becoming unruly, which was fun
they didn't really have responsibilities per se, more just keeping order within and outwith the classroom, and sometimes they'd have to take things for the teacher like the paper boy except for other stuff like idk stationery
there were also head prefects but frankly i don't really know what extra powers they had compared to regular perfects, of which there would be two in each class
we don't really have a house system; but one of our universities does and they kinda make a big deal out of it
we also use our lockers a lot because our textbooks and folders are T H I C C and no one really wants to bring that stuff to school every day. although as we neared graduation the lockers started being used for stuff like sneakers and no one really gave a shit if you don't lock your locker
interesting the impact of colonialism, eh. although to be fair my secondary school was literally one of the first ones that had been set up after the british arrived
School in Canada varies a lot but in MY elementary school we had 8 half hour periods in a day where 2 Classes (C) -> 15min break -> 2 C -> lunch -> 2C -> 15 min break -> 2C. Then in high school we had 5 50 minute classes and 10 minutes inbetween each class and lunch after the first 3 periods
My class from my rural American school only had 28 people when we graduated. Overall my k-12 had just over 300 students total 😭 Live in the UK now and I’m still blown away by their school experiences compared to mine
You went to a similar school as I did. My graduating class was 18 and only about 300 in K-12 as well.
My secondary school in the UK had over 1400 students. (Including about the 150 to 200 sixthformers) but for the lower main school we had 8 classes per year and about 25 - 30 students per class so about 225 to 250 per year
In my secondary school we didn’t have lockers for most of the time so we’d carry everything all day (including PE kit on some days). Later on they did add lockers but you had to pay for them so most people didn’t bother. We had about 1500 pupils in the whole school (11-18) but most of the time I was there there was just one lunch sitting, but most people brought packed lunch and we’d be spread around the grounds and two different dining rooms so there was usually space, although the canteen queue was really long so two sittings would have been a good idea
I went to two different UK high schools, both of them had the lot, Head Boy, Head Girl , VHB, VHG, Prefects, Houses, House Captains and so on. The house colour denoted the colour of the tie that you wore. My house was called Wilton, it was blue. My sisters was called Stanley and it was green. Just in case you were wondering , the other two colours were red and yellow. Red was called Egerton and I cannot for the life of me remember what yellow was called. It's been a while.
I didn't get prefect, but I did get Librarian, which suited me because I got to go to the library everyday and read whilst everyone else had to go outside, in the cold.
So when I was in primary school the best performing students were given prefect status. The only responsibility we had was to keep an eye on the infants (age 4/5-7/8) cloakroom (where coats and book bags were kept). Hand out milk to those whose parents signed up for it as well as ensuring each student only took one piece of fruit (apple, orange or a banana). The only benefit was we got to drink any leftover/unclaimed milk.
In secondary school we only had year 11 (age 15/16) prefects for the last few months and they kept that status into sixth form if they stayed on at the school; they had both a prefect badge and a slightly different tie as their uniform. At year 13 you could apply for advanced prefect status; again a different tie but the only expectations were to do guided tours or to tell people where to park at events (if you weren't taking part) and parents evenings.
My school only had one head (girl or boy) who was picked out by the headmaster of the school.
However we also had class representatives; in school we were separated into 4 houses; after the first year you only interacted with them first thing in the morning for the register (or after an assembly if there was one) and then for house competitions (rugby, football or athletics) otherwise. But the class representatives were somewhat democratic; you had to volunteer and then the class would vote on who would represent them. These class representatives would have meetings with the school board as well as the teachers and would have some limited say in what was covered in curriculums (barring any with restricted exam contents) and which events the school put on.
I still have my prefect's tie from my secondary school; it was black with the school badge on, rather than the multi-coloured striped tie everyone else had to wear. Before my year you used to get a yellow enamel metal badge that said "Prefect" on instead. I think after I left they brought in additional special ties for things like head boy and head girl. Prefects were chosen by the 1st deputy head from the 5th year pupils...but given something like 70% of the year got chosen, it didn't exactly mean a huge amount.
We used to get something like 5 minutes to change between classes...which was a pain if your last lesson was art and your next lesson was maths, because the art rooms were all in the lower school building and the maths rooms were mostly all on the upper second floor of the upper school building, on the other side of the site.
I seem to remember they also changed the length of the lessons at some point, because when I first started the day was divided up in to ... I want to say six or seven one hour blocks and you'd either have single lessons or double lessons. Things like art, CDT, P.E., and H.E. were always double lessons, but classes like history, geography, or maths would be be one two hour lesson a week and two one hour ones (or something like that anyway). Sometimes you'd get a two hour lessons that spanned the mid-morning break as well, so you'd get a 15 minute gap in the middle of it.
Sixth form at my secondary school was the opposite to Heather's: the number of people plummeted. Either because people dropped out of education at 16 or because they preferred to go to the local sixth form college instead. I suspect we had about 100 to 120 people per-year, spread across six houses, for the first to fifth form, then probably the upper and lower sixth combined form was probably less than 100 people in total.
At my secondary, we had perfects and head boy/girl (of the entire school, aside from sixth form, where you had senior prefects) - with head boy/girl, you had to apply and do a speech, then you were chosen by teachers. Prefects and senior prefects were chosen by students. Had to represent the school as well ofc - do tours and stuff. We had 3 or 4 lunches, can't remember how many tbh, but we had 2 years on lunch per lunch period - and we had 5 periods daily and 6 periods on Wednesdays - we didn't have vice head boy/girl either
For each year you had student councillors, not head boys/girls. We had houses too! Randomly chosen and you were put into whatever, they didn't matter throughout the year aside from some small aesthetic differences in the tie and jumper colour, and sports days haha
We didn't do assemblies ourselves though, not at all - we just sat through them every week
i went to parochial school k-8 and also for high school. we had "post" in 6th grade where we would open people's doors for them when dropping/picking up kids before and after school, raise and lower the flags, or essentially be a hall monitor before and after school (just making sure kids didn't run lol). we had about 300 kids total at the k-8 school, around 20-30 kids a grade. in high school, it was about 70-80 kids a year, still around 300 total and didn't have detentions (they were called "Thursday school" and were mostly for tardies/late assignments). we had competitions between different grades/hallways (in the k-8 school the blue hallway was preschool-1st grade, red was 2nd-5th, and the green hallway was middle school) but we really didn't have any violence (compared to the public middle school where my now bf got stabbed in the neck with a pencil).
My secondary school was quite big (300-350 people per year). We didn't have lockers or anything. We also didn't have prefects, but we did have pupil mentors, which is probably about the same thing (we just wore bright jumpers, and younger years were supposed to be able to ask us for help or whatever, but we didn't really do very much).
Also our lunch was split into 3 groups (y7, y8 & y10, y9 & y11). Our 4th period was an hour and a half instead of an hour, and one of the half hour sections was lunch (so y7 would have half of 4th period, then half an hour lunch, then finish 4th period)
Our prefects applied and got either academic (helping students with homework) roles or like community roles (like organising charity, being a bus prefect to make sure the school buses were calm) and teachers decide. Then for head boy and head girl who would do speeches at open events and other stuff you would apply and then your year would vote for who they wanted (which causes much drama) but the teachers had a heavier weighted vote for head boy and girl. These were all year 11s as our sixthform was separate
In my school prefects are near end of year ten to near end of year 11. Basically year 11 left to do GCSES, but before they left they presented the new prefects and house captains plus house vice captains, house sports captains and house secretaries their badges after applying and elected by teachers from year 10. Year 12 and 13 were optional years of study (16-18) and had little to do with the lower school
Lockers used to be prolific but they do appear to be dying out
I find this hilarious, I left high school in 2010 but half way through my final year of school, after classes had "Officially" ended for year 11s and during the time we were given to study for GCSEs I was brought in by the Head, the deputy head and the school councillor and "Politlely asked to leave early" for the benefit of the other students. This sounded awesome to me at the time but thinking back I realize how fucked up it was, I had some serious mental health issues tht the school refused to try to address and all in aid of their OFSTED score they thought it would be better if if a broken person like me was no longer affiliated with the school. Once I took the deal to leave early and no longer be a student I was no longer considered a student and anything I did no longer affected their score as a school. This meant that during my formative years when I had issues with drug addicition, breakdowns and episodes the school was no longer culpable despite the fact that my time at that school is what lead to the majority of my mental health issues.
They refused to help an outcast child and instead of standing up and taking responsibility they gave that child an out and framed it as some sort of kindness and left it to them to figure out almost 15 years later that they were in fact abandoned because the adults they trusted had given up on them.
In my school in Dorset, we didn't have prefects or head boy/girl but in sixth form you could apply to be principal student of the subject you want. We did have houses that were originally colours but then named after previous students who had died.
We never had lockers until I was in the 6th form. Even then, not all lockers could be locked. We usually stored our belongings in our desk, or used the coat hooks for larger items such is coats and sports gear. That was fine in primary school, where we remained in one classroom. But in high-school, there was no way of keeping our belongings secure - other than carrying them around all day.
In secondary school we were 8-form entry, so each year from 7-11 had approx 240 students. Everyone in the school had the same lunch hour in which to freely choose when to get their lunch but, each year group had its own lunch hall (common room).
I feel like this only describes posh British schools 😂 we didn't have prefects, but we did have a bridge crossing the main road that ran right through the middle of the school...
No it isn't posh state schools. It depends on the head of the school what you had. So mine scrapped houses but implemented prefects.
At my secondary school prefects were chosen by teachers but positions like head girl/boy was an elected position everyone had to campaign and do a speech to be chosen.
Also we had house captians but they only really mattered in regards to sports or competitions it was purely just a hollow title
In my public highschool, the first year it opened, the authorities were so disconnected with reality they hired the school bullies as hall monitors. As you can imagine, they fully took advantage of the situation by also closely "monitoring" bathrooms and even peek over the stall walls (girl's AND boy's). Of course, it was impossible to complain so, I too, from then on, never went to the bathroom in highschool.
I’m in the UK, I never had lockers in primary or secondary school. In primary we had hooks outside one of our classrooms, or in our classrooms. But in the last year of primary we had a ‘block’ so we were all separate from the other years. And there were shelves to put our stuff in, each separate shelves too.
Secondary, we just put our bags either under our desks or behind our chair depending what we felt comfortable with. But both my schools were really small. My secondary only had 600 students, so that may have had something to do with it as there probably wasn’t anywhere to put lockers
Oh and, all our lunches were at the same time. We had 1 too. But in year 9 my secondary school decided to split the times each year went on lunch, to make it quicker for those getting school meals, so we went 15 mins before the year below went back in to class