School Corporal Punishment History11

The 1980s saw the beginning of a completely new approach to discipline. Peter Hawkins and Malcolm Joseph drew up the Kostka Hall School Rules in 1986, with the aim of setting specific goals for boys’ behaviour and focusing on acceptable boundaries. The rules covered behaviour in such areas as travelling to school, classrooms, lunch breaks, the library, sport and examinations. In the same period, the school introduced the ‘strap book,’ through which staff became more accountable for their disciplinary techniques by having to record each use of the strap. The culture of discipline was changing in the wider community, and well before the final entry in the strap book (in 1990), use of the strap had rapidly diminished.’