The anticipation was indeed dreadful, making you wait was an art form in itself and when the time came it was almost a relief to get it over with.
The first time I was caned at prep school it was for being “on report”.
If you behaved badly or your work was poor you were given a blank timetable and you had to carry it round to all your lessons and get the teacher to fill it in at the end.
They marked the period with “satisfactory” if you had been good and worked well or the dreaded “unsatisfactory” if you had not.
On Monday morning during the break, the Headmaster would see everyone who was on report and you would hand your form in.