Question for primary school teachers...

[GaolBhoAlba]

Attempting to settle a debate with my friend... Are house captains in your school chosen by pupil vote alone, or do teachers also vote? Thank you!

Pupil vote with occasional slight teacher intervention at the margins.

Teacher's decide

Pupil vote then teachers have a say .

House captains are pupil vote... although they will never know if there's an occational fudging of results where necessary!

Head boy/head girl/deputy head boy/deputy head boy are staff appointments (usually decided by Year 5 teachers at the end of the year, with SLT input).

We don't have houses.

Interviews then decided by staff

Different in every school for these kinds of roles, so you're not going to get any clarity here.

Both - pupils and teachers have a vote

Thanks for all the replies. The school, where both our children go, promote it as a pupil only vote. I initially disagreed with her about teacher involvement, however it seems (having spoken to one or two other parents this morning) that I was wrong - teachers can (and do) influence the outcome.

I used to have to hold elections for form rep (in secondary), but nobody said what the voting system had to be, so I used to wait and see who was standing. One year, there was a kid who was likely to be everyone's second choice and nobody's first choice. I gave them two votes each.

@lanthanum

I used to have to hold elections for form rep (in secondary), but nobody said what the voting system had to be, so I used to wait and see who was standing. One year, there was a kid who was likely to be everyone's second choice and nobody's first choice. I gave them two votes each.

I think when it works in everyone's favour, as with your example, its fine. It makes me uncomfortable though that kids, even with the most votes from their peers, can be denied the place on teacher's say so. I think thats awful?

Pupils. However I do think this isn’t necessarily the best idea. In my school it is the most popular pupil which can be as a result of being the richest (so parents can afford shiny ‘vote for XXX’ stickers) or being a misbehaved pupil (always top of the pecking order and others are scared of them and vote for them to avoid nasty repercussions.
Often the best and most suitable candidate may be overlooked in a popularity contest.

In my experience, if the voting is genuinely anonymous, pupils tend to vote for their friends. If it’s less anonymous, they tend to vote for the
Class clown. In all honesty, I don’t think having house captains / head girl or boy in primary school is necessarily appropriate.

At my school teachers decide, no input from pupils, as it does become a popularity contest.

We also have things like school council which are pupil elected (though no one would know if the teachers fudged the results…)

Our class parliamentarians are chosen by student vote, but head boy and girl are chosen by whole staff vote.

Varies from school to school I'd imagine. At my school, it's either entirely teacher selected (which the kids know about) or done via class votes.

I do 'rig' my votes by making them vote for 3 people (and rank 1, 2, 3). I find it muddies the waters and makes it impossible for them to go around the class on yard asking who voted for who. Nice to avoid dealing with that little problem.