while teachers at the sharp end of trying to educate large classes of children (60 children in a class was not uncommon to begin with, and upwards of 100 was not unheard of) who generally didn’t want to go to school, and who were sometimes encouraged by their parents to deliberately misbehave because the parents didn’t want their children forced to attend school – insisted they needed to use corporal punishment. Eventually a series of compromises between the two sides developed – corporal punishment would be permitted, but not the ‘excesses of the Public schools’ – only in the mildest forms used in the Public Schools would be considered acceptable in board schools.

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