From an historian’s perspective:
The first serious efforts to set regulations on the use of corporal punishment in British schools occurred under the auspices of the London School Board between 1871 and 1893 – it was quite a long and complicated process that I won’t outline in detail here (because, frankly, I honestly don’t think most people are interested in actual historical facts, considering the response to some of the other material I have taken the time to research and post on), but basically there was a struggle between the LSB and the teachers. The LSB (mostly made up of fairly radical reformers – after all at the time, universal education, especially for the poor was a fairly radical idea) wanted corporal punishment to be as limited as possible –