To the modern reader, the notion of a seventeen or eighteen-year-old pupil sitting in judgment upon a younger schoolboy may appear extraordinary.
To many pupils of the 1940s and 1950s it was simply part of school life.
Neither recollection should be ignored.
The prefect system reflected a particular philosophy of education: privilege was supposed to carry responsibility, seniority brought authority, and boys approaching adulthood were expected to take some part in governing the small society in which they lived.
Whether that arrangement produced responsibility or merely gave too much power to the senior boys remains open to debate.
What can be said with greater certainty is that the 1960s represented an important turning point.
The prefect did not disappear. The elaborate cap, the badge and the title survived in many schools.
But the formidable schoolboy authority of an earlier generation — the prefect who could summon another pupil before his own court and exercise powers normally associated with a master — was already becoming a figure from another age.
