Battle of the belt

 

Corporal punishment was common and legal in Scottish schools until the 1980s. The main method used was to strike the palm of the pupil’s hand with a leather strap called a “tawse”. It was a specially made leather strap and was commonly known as “the belt.”

 In 1976 two parents from Scotland submitted a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court eventually ruled that the UK had to respect parents’ objections to corporal punishment at school. The case was important as it was the first to consider the issue of whether it was acceptable to physically punish children in schools.

It subsequently led to the abolition of corporal punishment in all state-supported education in the United Kingdom, and had far reaching consequences, both in the UK and beyond.

In 2018, BBC TV looked back ......

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Traditional School Discipline

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