20 April 2025
In my time at Caldecott the established idea was that children might earn privilege - some extra liberty / self-regulation or other reward - by good conduct or, in practice, absence of obviously bad conduct being noticed by staff. That tended to be reviewed on a weekly basis. For instance, in the junior school, even in Miss Diana's Nursery class, a child might earn a red star. Likewise out of class, we might deserve a sweet from Study tuck and a marginally later bedtime (absurdly early in contrast with home life in London). Sometimes we did something that was helpful but otherwise it depended on keeping noses clean.
In the term when Study boys moved down to a separate playroom from the girls, one rule sought to limit bad language. Most of us used expletives in context or depending upon mood or desire for emphasis, although some seemed to have difficulty omitting swear words from each sentence. Allowing a pragmatic margin, the rule was that any of us that staff heard swear at least ten times in a week would lose privilege for the next week. I wonder if they kept accurate count. We did not like this hanging over us and so we sometimes rattled off ten expletives in a row.
As regards the junior-senior boys in the West Wing, Miss Travers put up a weekly list of our names - those listed above a red line being awarded privilege for the time. In the Colt House, the oldest and supposedly most responsible boys might be permanently privileged uniform boys, PPU's, sort of prefects. Other uniform boys (age 14 or more) were the subject of weekly lists indicating which had earned privilege for that time.
I imagine that girls may have had something similar in their separate parts of Hatch.
Our view at Hatch was that children at the Paddocks or later with Bing at Lacton Hall had more cushy regimes, such as often watching TV.