Prefects/Forms? (was Re: Question From A befuddled American)

[Neil Ward]

No: HPFGUIDX 26467

Kyli said:

<<I'm the same: Befuddled American, but I have an idea, although it may not
be
correct.   I figured that prefects are one boy and one girl from fifth and
sixth year from each house. There are no seventh year prefects because there
is the Head Boy and Girl.  I remember in SS/PS that Percy was in his fifth
year and Ron said that Percy got new robes and an owl because he became a
prefect. I think that if the prefect age was younger, we would have seen
someone (Hermione) a prefect already. So I stand by that it's fifth sixth
year.>>

Welcome befuddled Americans!

Based on the evidence from the books I think Kyli is right, although the
Head Boy and Girl would also be prefects, just prefects with a repesentative
role.

I find it odd that there are so few prefects, since in most secondary
schools (including boarding schools), many, if not all, the older students
would take on prefect duties.  What JKR seems to be describing sound more
like House Representatives.

For information, secondary schools in Britain are equivalent in age to
Hogwarts' intake, with seven years for students from the 11/12 to 17/18 age
range.  Sixth and seventh year students are usually known collectively as
'The Sixth Form', split into the Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth.  Prefects are
drawn from sixth formers (possibly the fifth formers, but less likely, I
think).

On a related topic, there is another concept I haven't seen in the HP books;
that of forms and form captains.  In addition to having houses, most British
schools split each year into forms (usually three or four per year) each of
which would include students from each of the school houses.  Instead of
having a house common room as the shared base, students have a form room,
with a form teacher who takes the register each morning and acts as a
'parental' figure.  The students elect a form captain to represent them.

That's just from my experience, but it occurred to me recently that the
focus we see at Hogwarts, on smaller groups of students from each House, may
have something to do with the streaming of students, and that we're only
seeing one stream in the action.  I admit that there's no real evidence for
that (before all you L.O.O.N.s attack me), but it's a way of coping with
JKR's puzzling 1,000 figure without having to bend the laws of physics.

Neil
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Flying Ford Anglia