Corporal punishment in British state schools, and also in private schools receiving any element of public funding, was banned by parliament in 1987. For an overview of the events leading up to abolition, and its aftermath, see a Jan 2007 newspaper article, "Sparing the rod".
In the remaining private schools it was banned in 1999 in England and Wales, 2000 in Scotland, and 2003 in Northern Ireland. Most had anticipated the legislation and abandoned CP voluntarily several years earlier. A few Christian private schools held out, and fought the ban through the courts, ultimately without success (see links below).
What did CP in British schools involve? There is no single, simple answer. This page is mainly about state schools in England and Wales. Because Scotland has its own distinct education system with different traditions, there is a separate article about CP in Scottish schools. Private schools, about which even fewer generalisations are possible, will have to await separate treatment elsewhere. (But see this 1973 newspaper article for a round-up of the caning situation then prevailing at seven "top" private schools.)
The state education system in England and Wales used to be highly decentralised, and there were always wide variations of practice between schools, even between different schools of the same kind in the same area. The only rule laid down by central government was that all formal CP was supposed to be recorded in a punishment book.(1)
(1) Department of Education, Administrative Memorandum 531, 1956 (but this was only a codification of a requirement laid down much earlier).
The 100+ local education authorities (LEAs) in England and Wales -- created in 1902 to replace the old local school boards -- formulated their own rules, or in some cases decided not to have any rules.(2) These varied a lot, but most were not very specific about the modus operandi. It is easier to list the few maverick oddities than to try to summarise the majority: thus, the tawse was specified instead of the cane in a handful of places, including Newcastle, Gateshead, Manchester (which changed over from the cane in 1907), and Walsall. Just one LEA, Coventry, bizarrely required all canings for both sexes, even at secondary level, to be applied to offenders' hands and not to their backsides. Two others, Kingston and Richmond, in my view much more sensibly, came close to saying the opposite -- that caning of the hands was strongly discouraged as potentially injurious.(3) Richmond was also unusual in adding that girls, unlike boys, must not be caned at all, though they could be slapped with the open hand.
(2) Under Section 23 of the Education Act 1944.
(3) A point of view dating back at least to 1903.
Only two LEAs laid down a maximum number of strokes (East Sussex, 3 strokes; Durham, 6 strokes). 18 required the act to be done in private; 10 mandated a witness to be present. About half of all LEAs said that only women teachers could punish girls, but only two, Inner London and Oxfordshire, also laid down that only men could cane boys. Some (Barnet, Brent, Clwyd, Derbyshire, Mid-Glamorgan, Oxfordshire) forbade the caning of girls other than on their hands while explicitly stating that boys could be disciplined either on the hands or on the clothed buttocks. Some LEAs confined themselves to prohibiting teachers from hitting pupils' heads or boxing their ears. Some restricted the number of staff permitted to inflict CP, e.g. to the head teacher and those specifically delegated by him or her. At least one (Bradford) laid down that the punishment must follow as soon as possible after the offence. Three (Newcastle, Shropshire, Wiltshire) said just the opposite: that there should be a cooling-off period before discipline was administered.(4)
(4) Guide to LEAs' Corporal Punishment Regulations in England and Wales, Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment, Croydon, 1979.
All that was the situation as at 1979. LEA rules from earlier periods include the long-defunct Middlesex in 1950 (girls to be caned "only in exceptional circumstances" and only on the hands; boys could be caned on the hands or buttocks) and Somerset in 1954 (CP only as a last resort; girls to be caned only in extreme cases, and never by male teachers).
There had been disputes about CP since the early days of universal state education. In this 1894 court case, a clearly out-of-control teacher was successfully prosecuted and fined for assault. It is interesting that the judge in that case deprecated caning on the hands and boxing the ears, and said they were "exceedingly dangerous forms of punishment". He went on to observe that "nature provided a special place for boys to be punished upon and it should be used".
