At my school, being caught smoking was guaranteed to trigger a caning. In fact, it was really the only cause of formal canings that happened regularly, although various occasions of wanton damage of school property did get dealt with in that way.
One thing that didn’t meet with the cane, but I know happened at other schools, was missing a detention. That always meant you had to do detention twice, so very few people did miss them.
Three detentions in a month( or was it a week
) got you the cane at my school. Headmaster would read out the names at assembly on a Friday morning. I think I might have posted about this before but you obviously knew your name was going to be read out so the ‘ experienced / clued up’ lads always had a couple of pairs of pants or PE shorts underneath, they seemed to get away with it.