One former pupil recalls entering a grammar school in north-west London in 1961.
During his first year, a boy returned to the classroom in tears and told his companions that he had been punished by the prefects. Another boy immediately claimed that he too had experienced the prefects’ discipline and proudly explained that his punishment had been considerably lighter.
The incident left a strong impression upon the younger boys. The prefects were not distant figures in school caps and gowns; their authority was quite real.
Yet traditions were already changing.
By the time the same pupil reached the sixth form and became a prefect himself, the old disciplinary power had disappeared. There was, he remembers, no dramatic announcement. The custom simply seems to have faded away.
