I Got The Cane Or Slipper In The Sixth Form

I was caned twice during my sixth form years in the early 1960s, once for skipping school and smoking and once for an offence which embarrassed the Headmistress – an agonising six of the best on both occasions. At my school the girl’s age seemed irrelevant when she was to be disciplined. It was entirely the nature and seriousness of your offence that determined your punishment. It mattered not whether you were a trembling 11 year old or a hardened sixth former - a caning offence was a caning offence. The only thing that changed was that the canings became more severe as you got older. The other change of course was that as you matured and became more worldly-wise, you were much more careful to stick to the rules (a plus in favour of corporal punishment) but equally rather more careful to avoid being caught when you did misbehave. So from memory, there was a significant decline in the frequency of canings as we progressed, and by sixth form, it was becoming much more of an ‘event’ when one of us was caned.

Few, if any, of the girls would have avoided the cane in their seven years at the school, but I think only a minority of us sixth-formers got the cane.

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NortiusMaximus · M

It was similar in my school. Not many of us, boys and girls, got through school without getting the cane. It wasn't used much in sixth form but quite a few of us still managed to get it. It was the same with the slipper. A girlfriend and I got the slipper in sixth form a few times too.

It was the same at my wife's school. She and several of her contempories also got the cane in sixth form.

MaryWat · 70-79, F

Thanks for that comment, which really confirms that being in the sixth form was no insurance against getting the cane or the slipper. But I do agree with you – it may not have come our clearly enough in my original posting – that the frequency of corporal punishment was significantly less in sixth form. I think there were three reasons for this. First the sense that beating 16-17-18 year olds on their bottoms was becoming questionable. Second, pupils becoming more responsible and more careful in those last two or three years; and thirdly, in those days, many schoolchildren left school after “O” levels (age 16ish) to pursue non-academic careers or apprenticeships, and this cohort probably contained more of the disruptive pupils who had received a disproportionate number of canings or slipperings in the first five years.

Interesting comment about your wife’s similar caning experiences in sixth form. I received two canings while a sixth former, and while probably the majority of my contemporaries would have been caned at least once in the sixth, a substantial minority went through their sixth form years without getting the cane. (I was quite well behaved in the sixth form. Just very unlucky!)