United Kingdom
In state-run schools, and also in private schools where at least part of the funding came from government, corporal punishment was outlawed by Parliament with effect from 1987. In other private schools it was banned in 1999 (England and Wales), 2000 (Scotland) and 2003 (Northern Ireland). In 1993, the European Court of Human Rights held in Costello-Roberts v. UK that giving a seven-year-old boy three 'whacks' with a gym shoe over his trousers was not a forbidden degrading treatment.
The implement used in many state and private schools in England and Wales was a flexible rattan cane, applied either to the student's hands or (especially in the case of teenage boys) to the seat of the trousers. Slippering was widely used as a less formal alternative. In a few English cities, a strap was used instead of the cane.
In Scotland a leather strap, the tawse, administered to the palms of the hands, was universal in state schools, but some private schools used the cane.
A 2008 poll of 6,162 UK teachers by the Times Educational Supplement found that one in five teachers would still back the use of caning in extreme cases.
Read more about this topic: School Corporal Punishment, Country By Country
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