Headscratchers / The Naughtiest Girl

• How has the school's policy of sharing pocket money equally among the pupils survived? The idea is to ensure that they don't have a situation where some of the children have a lot of pocket money and others have little or none, so all money is collected and each pupil is allotted two shillings (I think it's two pounds in the new editions) but the system relies on some of the children contributing a lot more to the kitty than they get back. Without those who bring more money subsidising those who bring little or nothing, the amount available to be distributed among the children dwindles. Whatever about being taken by surprise in one's first term, surely there must have been a lot of parents over the years who weren't okay with the idea of sending their son or daughter to school with a large sum of pocket money, only to have most of it confiscated and redistributed, and who gave them no more than the allotted pocket money per term, and who asked friends and relatives not to send birthday money directly to the school.
  • Do the children have to give in the money they've saved? There's no mention of anyone saving up for something, or asking for an advance rather than getting money the next week.
    • However, in the third book, Julian produces the pound that Elizabeth marked a while ago when he goes to see the head children and gets an explanation for why Elizabeth accused him of stealing. There had been a meeting that same night, so the fact that he still has it makes it clear he didn't put it into the box, so that suggests they are allowed to save their weekly pocket money.
• In the third book, when Elizabeth is stripped of her position as monitor, the main reason is because she accused Julian of theft wrongly. However, the second reason is because she has been sent out of the classroom for alleged misbehaviour, although the reason both times was the effects of the tricks Julian played on her. Usually, after Julian confesses to it, the school would have been told that that part wasn't Elizabeth's fault and it would have been written down in the school's incident book. However, a few chapters later, Elizabeth reads that the book still insists her behaviour in class was one of the reasons she lost her position. Elizabeth had to stand up and tell the school that she was sorry for accusing Julian of theft, so why didn't he have to tell the school that he was the real reason Elizabeth kept getting sent out for misbehaviour?