But a duty prefect almost always stood on the other side of the gap with a plimsoll. And it was custom and practice, as they say, for a fair few boys to regularly go across and through the hedge, bend over without complaint, and take the standard one single swipe of the plimsoll before joining the bus queue.
Now, in both of those cases, there was at least a sort of complicity and foreknowledge of the corporal punishment to be delivered. And in neither case, I imagine, would the willing victims have been half as willing if a caning had awaited.