I have had a good look round Friends Reunited and a few other sites and I cannot find anywhere any reference to corporal punishment being used in girls grammar schools apart from Northwich in Cheshire by Miss Dines.

Was it ever used in these schools?

Billy

In the 70’s a lot of the Grammar Schools closed or amalgamated with Comprehensives, I suspect any reference to girls grammar school CP may be referenced under the latter.

FR is not always that accurate in listing merged schools, some of which went through several name changes.

Girls on the other hand appear more embarrassed to describe incidences of SCP, or receiving such, therefore references are limited, I doubt many mentioned it at home either.

Generally girls seemed better behaved in single sexed school rather then co-ed so incidences would be fewer.

Ketta

Thank you for that. I will search again and try to find some amalgamated schools. I agree that girls are less likely to want to talk about corporal punishment they received because of embarrassment. You are the exception and I thank you for being so open about it.

Dowsett High School for Girls, Southend-on-Sea:

"Miss Fitzsimmons

Always wore that blue check suit with the velvet collar. Never ever remember seeing her in anythihg else. Very cold scarey lady. Myself and Lynn Stone got the cane from her once for bunking school. Only time she seemed to show any emotion. (pleasure)"

"Miss Fitzsimons

One pupil in my year was to be caned by Fitzie and when asked to put out each hand she had both arms in plaster, then asked to bend over she had a lot of undergarments on, Fitzie got madder & madder."

"Mrs Lay

Taught English. I remember her being pregnant and the baby kicking her hymn book off her lap in assembly in the middle of one of Miss FizSimons' caning sessions."

"Miss Fitzsimmons

The old headmistress who used to measure your skirts with a ruler to see they weren't too much above the knee as per the school regs, and used the cane when we were found smoking. If only she knew that we used to roll up our skirts by the waistbands till we had 30" waists in order to look fashionable on the way home!"

"Another thing...

I thought it really unfair that we could be caned and the "posh lot" next door were untouchable!!"

It is grammar schools that I was trying to find. There are quite a few references to corporal punishment in girls secondary modern and high schools, such as Dowsett.

The quote about the “posh lot” confirms what I first thought.

Once again, the Survey of Rewards and Punishments in Schools can give us some useful information here. This survey carried out the early 1950s by the National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales and published in 1952 includes what is probably the most detailed statistical survey of corporal punishment practice in Britain ever undertaken.

And from data on page 163 of that report, we find evidence that corporal punishment was extremely rare in girls grammar schools at the time of the survey.

Corporal punishment was used in girls grammar schools at a rate that was approximately 1/60th that of girls in education as a whole.

As other data in the study, indicates that approximately 3.6% of girls would have been subjected to corporal punishment in any given year, we end up with an estimate of roughly 0.06% of girls in grammar schools being likely to be subjected to corporal punishment in any one year.

Not a very high number at all. And that's all corporal punishment - the figure for caning would be even lower.

Thank you very much indeed for those figures Dean.

I guess that just about wraps it up and I am unlikely to find any grammar school girl that was caned.

I remember the much-missed Steff writing that at her Girls’ Grammar School in London, pupils could be caned on the hand, but rarely did it happen. She seemed disappointed.

Disappointed that it happened rarely:
Disappointed it was on the hand.

Corporal punishment, notably caning, in British schools was made famous by stories from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, etc, but in truth CP in years gone by was just as likely in ordinary state schools.
Although not necessarily a represnative sample, most of the CP references, male & female, at Friends Reunited are from state comprehensives.
I certainly believe that girls were more likely to have been caned/slippered in mixed pupil/teacher state schools than all-girls, all lady teachers, private schools.
Although we all know about Miss Dines & Miss Fitzimmons

Paul

Dean's quotes from the 'Survey of Rewards and Punishments in Schools' from the early Fifties is interesting and helpful but I suggest that it needs to be treated with a degree of scepticism. As one who was at school at that time I remember very well that pretty well anyone, a parent, a teacher, a copper, could beat the hell out of you and there was no comeback. It was part of the culture. The person wielding the cane or strap would certainly have been born between 1900 and 1925, when things would have been a great deal worse. Even then, no doubt, they would have said that "kids have it too easy nowadays". The cane came out, was applied, and went back on the hook. Nobody bothered to record these things.

Lucinda, while all studies and all statistics should be treated with some scepticism, there's no real reason to doubt the Survey. It was carried out with a great deal of care and doesn't hide anything - there's clear evidence in it about corporal punishment being used a great deal, about it being used fairly arbitrarily, about a proportion of teachers using it in ways that most teachers didn't approve of, etc. None of that is hidden.

And the Survey in general shows that corporal punishment of girls was reasonably common - far more common than certain people here would like to credit. It's only when it comes to grammar and tech school school girls, that it really shows it to have been very rare. In Secondary Moderns, and Primary schools, it was quite common.

It must be remembered that these are figures for across England and Wales though. They don't preclude the possibility of there being some girls grammar schools that caned reasonably commonly. 100 canings on these statistics could indicate 100 schools in which girls were caned once, or 1 in which 100 girls were caned.