Student Council Elections

We had a first at St. Monica's this past week. We held an election for Student Council members. First a little background.

A prefect is a student monitor that helps the administration run the school. At St. Monica's their responsibilities include twice weekly inspection of the dorms and classrooms, reporting students who are late to preps and/or class, reporting student misbehaviour, supervising the dining hall and dorms, and all other activities. If a teacher wants anything done, they talk to the prefect about it so that it is taken care of. In the business world it would be a middle management position. These prefects have responsibilities, but also privileges. In the dorms, they get to sleep in small rooms with only about 6-8 girls in an enclosed room whereas all the other students sleep in a huge open area with at least a hundred other girls.

There are prefects for each classroom, each club or religious society, each dormitory, the dining hall, science laboratory, home science room, library, staff room, sanitation, entertainment, games, plus the Head Girl and Deputy Head Girl.


In order to bring schools into the democratic process of governance, the Kenyan Department of Education has decided that there will no longer be prefects in schools. That basically involves simply a name change from prefect to Secretary. In the past, the faculty and administration decided who the prefects would be. Here is where the major change came into play. No longer are the Secretaries, School Captain and Deputy School Captain to be chosen by the teachers, but they are to be elected by the student body. These secretaries, the school captain and deputy captain make up the Student Council. What a huge change!

First, a list of qualifications for each position was posted that included minimum grades, form level, conduct/behaviour, etc. Students had to write an letter of application to the Deputy Principal if they were interested. After these letters of application were received the deputy principal met with the teachers to weed out the list. We came up with the Short List of final candidates on Tuesday. The staff meeting where we discussed this and developed the logistics of the election took literally all of Tuesday. At 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon a school assembly was called where the short list of candidates was announced. Candidates were allowed to campaign from 3:00 until 5:00 Tuesday afternoon. The election was held on Wednesday.


Voting was done in the classrooms. The class teacher had an other teacher to help as they were the Election Officers. Our job was to pass out the ballots and supervise the voting. We were given two ballot boxes so students voted for two offices at a time. After the voting for those two offices was done, students were selected to help oversee the counting of ballots. Miss Irene and I emptied the ballot boxes as the students made sure they were entirely empty. Then one of us opened the ballots as the students announced to the other teacher who made tally marks on the board to record the votes. This was done in the presence of all the students in the class. After the votes were tallied, a note was written with the class results, again supervised by the student observers, then taken to the deputy principal. Then the next round of voting could begin..

It took all morning to complete the voting. After lunch, the results were announced. The new prefects were sworn in and assumed their duties. The reason that the election was done at this time was to release the Form IVs from all responsibilities as they spend the final four months of their secondary education preparing for the KCSE. It is felt that they need to devote all their time and attention to exam preparation, not school supervision.

I'm happy to report that four of my Form II East students were elected prefects! I think they will all do a good job in their new roles.

Hopefully by educating students as to how fair and transparent elections should be held, the elections of the country will follow suit.