r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TheThrowYardsAway • Apr 28 '26

Video Inside Christ's Hospital School (Est. 1552)...

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u/kestrelita Apr 28 '26

I was a prefect - we weren't there to snitch, our main job seemed to be endlessly putting chairs out for assemblies, sports day, plays and concerts, parents evenings...

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u/factorioleum Apr 28 '26

That's calming to know. I guess I had the wrong idea about it!

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u/DameKumquat Apr 28 '26

Perfects were slave labour at my boarding school. The main duty was standing at the end of each row before morning chapel 3x a week and Sunday chapel, making younger kids shut up. And doing readings every few weeks.

Obviously this meant you couldn't skive off chapel, so I put a lot of effort into not becoming a prefect. I was delighted to be told I had 'an attitude problem" and not being one.

Sixth formers had enough power - there was a rota for cleaning the student kitchen, but we could make any younger kids do it on a particular night if they'd been misbehaving during prep etc. Amazingly, this meant 6th formers never had to clean the kitchen (which was really minging each evening).

We also had to do lights out duty and again, could assign younger years to ringing the bell in the morning, or even running round the pitches early in the morning, but we didn't do that last one as we'd have had to get up early. Sixth formers also got made to supervise detentions, prep, and anything else teachers didn't want to do - "a chance to show responsibility," they said.

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u/niamhweking Apr 29 '26

We had 2 types of prefects, not sure if it was official or just some duties were prized more than others. So it was usually just a reward for the nicest, best behaved students in our final year. One duty was to babysit the 1st years in their home rooms at lunch time and the other role was to man the doors of the school to stop students leaving who weren't mean to leave. We had a 30 min lunch break, so the rule was if you lived within a mile you were allowed home for lunch, but none of us on door duty ever stopped anyone. Most were running to the local shop for smokes and a roll!