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Original poster

Am I being precious about my pfb?

28 replies

roisin · 22/07/2012 21:49

At ds1's school around 50 - 70% of students get prefect status each year.
Ds1 has always had impeccable reports, with highest possible grades for behaviour, commitment, attitude to peers and staff etc; and also very high attendance and extremely high progress and attainment.

In the last year he has been stressed with exam pressure and has been unhappy at school, but still had an excellent report - including the above - and got 3rd highest commitment grade in the whole yr group. We have been in touch with head of year and other pastoral staff about his despondency. A few months ago there was an incident in class and he lashed out at another pupil, resulting - quite rightly - in a detention: his first ever in 4 years.

For applications for prefect status there are 4 possible outcomes:

  1. Yes
  2. On probation
  3. No, but review later next term
  4. No

ds1 got 3, which I am astounded at. His target is "develop consistently positive relationships with staff and students". He is devastated, is taking it very badly, and currently seems very unlikely to respond positively to this setback, in the way they clearly hope he will. It strikes me that either
a) there are far more serious issues at school than we have been aware of, which have not been raised at parents evenings or in reports
b) they have introduced much stricter prefect criteria and are having far fewer this year
c) there has been an injustice. I realise he's not perfect, but I can't believe there are 120 odd students in the year who are more suitable prefect material than him.

So, is it unreasonable for me to contact head of year and ask for some clarification?

OP posts:
kilmuir · 22/07/2012 23:16

You are being PFB. I think a 2 criteria may have been fairer

VivaLeBeaver · 22/07/2012 23:13

If he wants clarification then he pint to ask his head of year himself. I suspect any clarification will be along the lines of if he doesn't thump anyone in the next few months he'll be made a prefect then.

BackforGood · 22/07/2012 23:07

Well, you can if you want to, but you might not hear what you want to.
I don't really think it would send out a good message to anybody if a school were appointing boys who have lashed out at another student recently, to a prefect's role. I'd consider that to be pretty serious, tbh.