Prefect Perfect?
Prefects are a familiar sight around the school building, and in many ways, they make sense as a law enforcement system, reminiscent of the Citizens On Patrol program featured in one of the Police Academy films. Prefects exist as a kind of cut down teacher, with some level of authority, and responsibility, but they're free to employ, and they have no corresponding employment rights. Although it wouldn't work in pretty much any other school in the city the Prefect system works fine in our school. At least it does from the civilian side of things. I have spoken to several prefects recently and they are less than happy about the situation. There is a general feeling of unease in the prefect world, and there is concern that in this new culture of violence the world seems to be descending into, any one of the hundreds of incidents that the average prefect deals with in the day could be the touchpaper that sparks off a major riot.

I realised that it wasn't just me who had picked up on the tension in the school. Mr. Vardon himself had gone to the trouble of holding a seminar with several experts in the field, and has come up with some very interesting ideas. This much I had picked up, but I was unable to find any details beyond what the grapevine had brought my way. So, in the spirit of information, I hacked into the school mainframe. Still, after hours of digging, I was unable to derive anything further than the bizarre fact that Mr. Vardon is actually allergic to computers. Damn. Well, I said to myself, looks like I'm going to have to do this the old fashioned way. So, I donned my Ninja suit, and caught the late bus up to the school. Twenty minutes and a couple of expertly broken windows later, I was stood in Mr. Vardon's shrine-like office. In his filing cabinet I found detailed plans for the new prefect system, and, more disturbingly, an application to the European Government to bend the rules slightly, and the receipt for a cheque for £500,000 made out to the EU luncheon fund.

I glanced briefly over the documents, letting my photographic memory do the work for me, and by the time I got home on the number 23 I had condensed the plans down into several Key points. I have outlined them as follows. The documents began with a review of the current system:

How it now is:

This prefect can clearly be seen to be of the traditional type: he looks ordered and tidy, a happy minion of the school, straight tied and smoothly ironed suit.

Note: his only badge of office is, in fact, just that, a badge. Although brightly coloured, and theoretically, clearly visible, the badge is deliberately made to be so small that younger members of the school only notice it once they have gone dangerously far down the road of being cheeky to them, assuming, incorrectly, that the prefect is in fact just a normal sixth former. This is deliberate, so that younger school members stop being so cheeky in general.

The only weapon the prefect carries with them is their own twisted sense of justice, and the arbitrary authority this bestows upon them. Prefects are chosen not because of their sense of justice, rather because of their arse-licking abilities. Prefects were voted for by the sixth-form, but this was just a PR exercise since Mr. Vardon chose the prefects all on his own, ignoring the results of the vote completely. Because of their arbitrary nature and the fact that prefects can dish out punishments on a whim, the idea of prefects is generally disliked by everyone except Mr. Vardon, since their only reason for existance (as prefects at least) is to provide a cheap alternative to teachers.

As I have said, the only skill required for being a prefect is the ability to kiss up to the staff and to make them feel wanted. Of course, prefects only actually want to be prefects so that they have something to put on their UCAS forms and on their CV's, but this suits the school just fine because this gives them a loyalty to the job that borders on the bizarre.
How it soon will be:

This prefect looks very different. He wears kevlar body armour underneath his blue riot suit, he has a polycarbonate helmet and mask on, and in his hands you can clearly see a police style baton, backed up with baton rounds if things get nasty.

The school system will be very different. Shortly after announcing the new prefect system in 2000, Mr. Vardon will instigate martial law in the school, and will place electronic tracer tags on all the pupils. He is also expected to form a council of war, and state his intention to be known as 'the General'.

The new prefects will be able to communicate their intentions to each other via a specially developed two-way shortwave radio system installed into the helmets. There will be a new rota of duty for the prefects which will ammend the current system: in addition to lates duty and dinner hall duty, they will be called upon to provide armed escorts for members of the senior staff who have been deemed vulnerable to attack by begrudged pupils. They will also be required to provide other services like the personal protection of pupils, at a minimal extra cost on top of the school fees.

There will also be a specially trained SWAT squad on permanent call, and CCTV is expected to be installed which would give the General the ability to monitor the actions of everyone in the whole school at any given time.

But don't worry too much, they will be easily bribed.