I think I could guess…

Marelli we had a head girl who became pregnant and mysteriously disappeared overnight. No replacement was appointed - perhaps there was doubt anyone would make it to the end of the academic year!

Same happened at my convent school - any girl pregnant simply vanished and her name erased from any honours board overnight. It happened to one head girl who'd excelled in sports and academically, leaving gaps in the prominently displayed Rolls of Honour. One entry had only just been completed, must have infuriated the engraver!

I did disappear. I sat out my pregnancy through the summer of 1966 in my parents' back garden.

Nope, I wasn't a prefect or head girl. I was captain of the hockey team till I got to 15 and decided all those bigger girls bashing my shins with their sticks was not enjoyable….

Paint monitor in junior school was the best I managed.

I wasn't neither prefect or head anything at my Grammar school. In fact I always felt a bit of a fraud for even being there at all. I'm sure some of the teachers thought there must have been some kind of mistake and I hadn't pass the 11+ after all.
Anyway you had to be a licky bum popular to be anything like that in my school.

Were you right, absent?

I was a prefect although the Rector (pretentious or what?) did say it was in the hope of giving me some sense of responsibility - the cheek of the man!

As anno said up thread the appointment meant sewing gold braid around the blazer which ensured we could be spotted a mile off . I wonder if that was a Scottish thing.

They're still called Rectors up here in our academies and yes, some schools still have the braid thing going. At my DC's school prefects had single gold braid stripe 4" above their blazer cuffs and group leaders had a double stripe. All had prefect badges as well.

I think Rector is a good title because it avoids the headmaster/mistress thing. All Scottish head teachers were always Rectors though I have heard that female secondary head teachers are less common in Scotland than they are here.
People who were in the 1st XI or XV got silver braid round their blazers. Most of my friends had both silver and gold but I never made it past the 2nd XI except as a reserve .

A prefect and a librarian.

Interesting responses

At school I was, how can I put it .... em ...... challenging, from about the age of 14. I was the one who always asked awkward questions. So when I was included in the number of prefects in upper 6th it was a very big surprise to me and probably the entire school. The Head later explained to me that the staff hadn't wanted me to be made a prefect but that she thought it would be good for me to learn a sense of responsibility, and become a boss instead of a troublesome pleb. at the time I was a bit offended but actually, I think she was right. I did improve my attitude!! A bit

My school had abolished prefects by the time I got to the sixth form. Presumably they were deemed unnecessary.

Possibly a bad move?

I was never a Prefect.

It said on my school report when I was 14 that "I was Prefect" material but never showed any inclination to be one."

That about sums it up.

Or an enlightened one, perhaps, alie?

I wasn't a prefect, too quiet to be noticed, but I was always in the school choir and always had a big part in any drama productions.
So I was obviously a drama queen!

Not me. I wanted to be a little bit sometimes. Not sure I would have made a very good one. Plus I soon worked out that it was a bit easier to become one if you came from one of the larger feeder schools.

That would indeed be a statistical likelihood, soon, since there would be more pupils from larger schools.

Oh dear No! I wasn't prefect material. I talked back, skipped school and generally misbehaved. I didn't want to be there anyway, I was just passing time until I could leave home, go and live on the Left Bank in Paris and become Juliet Greco. Jean Paul Sartre had a lot to answer for! (Never did get there except as a tourist!)

I did well at school and was pretty well behaved but I think there was a subversive air about me that stopped them making me a prefect Anyway it would have cut into the hours I spent skulking round the Art Room reading magazines!

Well, I was right about some and wrong about others. I was not a prefect and would have made a very bad one.

We had Form Captains in each class, I was one of those three times. Got asked to be a prefect but refused on the grounds that I thought some of the rules we had to enforce were pointless. So accepted the Lost Property Prefect role - just had to look after a cupboard full of lost stuff, log it in and out and bag it up for removal at the end of every term. Easy peasy.

By the way, there seem to be a few of us 'Essex Girls' on here. Me too. Seldom own up to it though

Prefect, House Captain and Librarian..... short of candidates for the first (even in a huge Comp!) chosen by fellow house members for the second( so only one worth being) volunteered for the latter (to stay in at lunchtime!)

I was a prefect in primary (if that counts) for my own class. I wasn't in 6th form though and only 6th formers in our school got to be a prefect. I always thought it said Perfect on their badge, probably a Freudian slip.