North Tyneside Capital of SCP and Teachers Who Break the Rules

These two are from the STOPP publication:
‘Britain’s Violent Teachers.’  (1982).

On attachment is a brief article highlighting the amount of, dare I use the word, ‘beatings ‘ (STOPP just love that word!) used in North Tyneside schools. The number of girls ‘beaten’ in 1979/80 is quoted.
Do we consider these figures as high?
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In the next attachment, it shows the result of survey conducted by a fourth year pupil at a Tayside school regarding teachers who admit to ‘breaking the rules’ by belting pupils of the opposite sex.
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Below that is shown the amount of CP incidents there had been at a Mid-Glamorgan school for offences such as truanting..

I look forward to your thoughts.

More to follow in other threads……
Thanks,
Paul

Unless I’m missing something in Paul‘s foundation post I suspect that you mean ‘North Tyneside’ rather than ‘Walsall’ in your contribution #2 above.  Although of course some schools in Walsall did use the strap.

As regards North Tyneside, I am unclear as to the area involved, and therefore the implement mandated for state schools by the LEA, if indeed they made such a recommendation.

In the same general geographic area the school involved in the (much discussed here) January 1976 Heaton riots certainly used the strap, but that was under the Newcastle LEA.  To compare that strap with the average Scottish tawse is like comparing a jeep with a main battle tank.  Even the so-called ‘super strap’ later introduced by Newcastle in response to continued unrest in its schools was only  20 inches long by 1.7 inches wide, and weighed a mere 55 grams.

Contrast that with probably the most popular model of tawse, the J J Dick ‘Lochgelly’ H two tail which was had a similar length of about 21 inches but weighed around 120 grams due to its 5/16 inch thickness.  The heavier model of the same tawse, quite often used on boys and sometimes on girls, was around 23 inches long and weighed 150-160 grams, nearly three times the weight of the Newcastle ‘super strap’.

If I’d got to be whacked on the hand with any of those three I’d take the super strap given a choice.  There was some smoke and mirrors about girls not being allowed to wear trousers and hence being at an SCP disadvantage in some of the press reports of the Heaton riots by reporters who were apparently under the mistaken impression that the implement involved was a cane. However I don’t recall any reliable claims that the Newcastle strap was used other than on the hand.  That is not to say there weren’t any though.

Another_Lurker wrote:Hello bripuk,

Unless I’m missing something in Paul‘s foundation post I suspect that you mean ‘North Tyneside’ rather than ‘Walsall’ in your contribution #2 above.  Although of course some schools in Walsall did use the strap.

Could Paul have been confusing Walsall and Wallsend? Wallsend is certainly near Newcastle upon Tyne.

Walsall in the West Midlands had a major leather industry in the past. There is a leather museum there and yes there are locally made (and used?) tawses displayed there. I believe the Walsall tawse was quite different to its Scottish counterpart. The Walsall ones had the handle end of the leather rolled around lengthwise to give a better grip. Unlike schools in other nearby areas Walsall schools used them rather than the more usual English school cane. I read somewhere of a brother and sister both being strapped in school for the same offence, the boy bent over to be strapped across the seat of his trousers whereas his sister was required to hold her hand(s) out.

It has to be remembered that the use of a belt or strap for corporal punishment at home for mischievous youngsters was by no means unheard of in the past. Dad’s substantial work belt, worn for support and well as holding trousers up for industrial or agricultural workers, was sometimes used at home to remind sons and perhaps daughters to behave better in the future. I read somewhere of straps from old leather drive belts made from machines being made available to workers for family punishment use. In the days of stream power factories had numerous drive belts delivering power from overhead driveshafts.

I’m sure many youngsters in the more distant past were able to compare school punishments with those they sometimes received at home. All this is in the past now of course, how times have changed. All of this post and most of my previous ones relate to the UK.

YEP! They knew how to push the buttons
Thank you, Kevin
Paul

It’s rather like when people referred to school punishments as spanking.  Spanking was what many parents did in the past but very few parents and youngsters called it that. I remember family discipline being called a good hiding, a tanning or sometimes a walloping. Obviously it was called different things in different areas. Some called home spanking according to what was actually used; the slipper or a slippering or just a slapped bottom.

School punishments were often just called the cane or the stick. At most UK schools the slipper was usually a plimsoll, know as the ‘dap’ where I grew up. I’ve also heard of school corporal punishment known as the ‘cosh’. An odd name for it, I’ve always thought of a cosh as a club or truncheon not something to punish across bottoms or hands.

bripuk wrote:When a pupil at my school was to be slippered the PE teacher often informed the boy that he was going to be beaten. Although it was a boys grammar school I think it still had pretentions to be a minor public school and when canings and slipperings were given they were often referred to as “beatings”.

Yes but it was just a phrase. A real beating in the true context meant to inflict injuries. Even when I was told to bend over in the headmaster’s office I knew the caning was going to really hurt and leave by bottom sore for a while but I also knew it wouldn’t leave me injured. Except injured pride perhaps!

You are correct about the usage of ‘beating’.  Mine was a public school, and an ancient one, albeit a day school not a boarding establishment .  The headmaster occasionally beat pupils, ie caned them.  Most of the caning was done by the prefects, and if you were caned by the prefects you said you got beats.

dmp wrote:i think beating is a wholly appropriate term for a school cp, they are all by definition beatings(well not such things as stress positions and forced repetitive activity but….). to try to claim they are not by imposing some sort of arbitrary amount of damage needed for an attack to do before its a beating is just silly. what would that damage level be… would you just figure out how much damage is done in a moderately severe scp incident and place the bar just a little higher… or would you just make it extremely high and involving injures not normally associated with scp… like its only a beating if there is either broken bones, organ damage or a concussion…. either way it wouldn’t conform to any generally accepted definition of the term.

You are technically correct of course. However it is rather like someone saying they are starving when they have just missed a meal. Before you know it patting someone on the head or any physical contact will be classed as assault.

The term ‘beating’ being used by STOPP was merely used to emphasis that they saw even the most minor application of school corporal punishment as physical assault.

All this relates to pure common sense. We now live in a world of political correctness where we have those who try to promote non contact sport with no winners or losers. Fortunately the Six Nations Rugby series is not trying to follow this. That said the modern game of professional rugby is very different to what I played at school!

‘Teachers must be clear that they are acting in the ultimate interest of the child and that there is no element of vindictiveness in their action.

However, in STOPP’s publication, ‘The Violent 81%,’  some individual schools did submit their regulations. Hence, the foundation report on this thread.
It seems that the strap on the hand was he most usual form of cP. In fact a number odf the schools make clear that it wwas , quote ‘On the hands only.’
Regarding Walsall, it says, quote

‘ Authorised tawse, only, in the former Walsall County Borough area.

Authorised tawse or cane in the former Aldridge?Brownhills area. A change may be made from cane to tawse, but not visa-versa.’

Mmmm, Interesting that. We can only guess mainly on the hand, or exclusively so. No mention of girls
A.L, thank you, for adding weight to the Mid-Glamorgan  piece. Yes, I have those quotes filed away, but it was excellent to be reminded of them.
More anon,
Paul