The headmaster will quickly move across to the door just inside of where the boy is probably standing; he reaches for his cane on top of the cupboard with one hand and pulls the boy into position with the other; he grips the boy firmly around the wrist and strikes him across the hand, twice, four, or six times according to the seriousness of the crime. This ceremony has been witnessed by individual teachers, and can always be seen by any boys on the first stairway inside the main classroom block.
This one paragraph alone is a tiny amount of a whole chapter on discipline half a page out of twenty-nine that makes it clear that these formal caning by the Headmaster are only a small amount of the corporal punishment at that school.