Burnley Grammar School

Aidan I take it your message is a wind-up, so I will ignore all of it except one detail. Jacob Rees-Mogg is a Rt. Hon, not a Sir, as I am sure he will inform you of the fact - if you do write to him.

Boys grammar school of about 800 boys through the 1960s. Corporal punishment was there as a sanction and while not every day was not uncommon. I reckon I got the cane once a term and most other lads were about the same. That would amount to 2400 canings a year if you want to try and sensationalise the numbers while in reality on the ground it was nothing extreme and to get into trouble once a term indicated that in the main most lads were fairly well behaved.

STOPP was a hippy/lefty organisation determined to destablilise the education system for their own ends and they whipped up support among working people who felt they were entitled to more than they got. The cases that were brought never should have been and were the reason why corporal punishment was withdrawn from state schools when its reasonable use should have continued as it did in the private sector until lily livered Bliar bowed to pressure and outlawed it there too.

Not everything is better these days and when I see louts exiting schools at the end of the school day, looking like they've just been dragged through a hedge and smoking as they do it, it demonstrates a world gone wrong. A Brexit benefit could be the reintroduction of the cane in boys schools. I will write to Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg today, I'm sure he will agree.

I had one of those inappropriate moments when I just had to laugh at the film clip of the school in Liverpool from the eighties and then the hansard report also posted. The whole thing was just so OTT outrageous and it was a description in hansard of teachers actually turning a hose on children that had me in disbelieving chuckles. The whole thing just creates images in the mind of a school of the absurd.

At least all my teachers just shouted and waved their arms around at us when we broke the rules.

I nearly got a smacking from headmistress for running in a corridor when I was only 7. My class teacher was about to send me to her office to be punished with a smack when she changed her mind. I remember the fear, overwhelming anxiety and actual shame I felt about it and it happened 48 years ago. My headmistress smacked children now and again for trivial things. But I'll give her one thing, she was respected and we behaved. But that's only at infant first school level.

I couldn't believe how angry I was when I heard about the Litherland School even a long while after it happened. But it does look like that school has had issues in recent years including sudden departures of heads. The mud has probably well and truly stuck to that school and as someone else noted surrounding name changing, schools that go into special measures in recent years have sometimes had complete overhauls including name changes. You would think Litherland would be good for a change and the fact that so many of us are on this history site talking about it forty years later rather proves it doesn't it. My old first school had a name change not long ago just for the sake of it, not because of any adverse issues surrounding its reputation.

Comment by: Tanya on 21st August 2022 at 02:35
"The headteacher, Mr Eric Colley, drew up plans in April 1981 to reinstate the cane in an attempt to reduce the amount of physical punishments"

This quote literally makes no sense.



That's bizarre. Complete agreement with you. Colley sounds like a sadist. But he wouldn't have been alone. Where were the governors, asleep?

What a sickener of a school with that endemic culture of violence. That headmaster had some significantly warped thinking processes going on inside his head to think anything like that was even close to being acceptable on a daily basis.

There was an incident in my secondary class one morning about autumn term 1979 where we had an older male geography teacher, forties I'd guess, who wasn't especially likable. He was actually quite a scruffy bloke and looked generally unkempt with an untamed beard and sideburns and hair that looked like a comb had never been close in years or a decent haircut. Yet us lot turned out smart in our uniforms and had various rules on what we had to look like and couldn't wear. General appearance didn't seem to apply to teachers though, they could show up for work teaching us as if they'd been dragged through a hedge backwards at times and our geography teacher was one of those kind who taught us. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered if he was half decent as a teacher or had a great personality but he had none of it.

I was in one of his geography classes in third secondary year and he had this habit of chucking things at certain boys not paying attention, often small items like a rubber which he aimed to hit with. But he also had a habit when a bit more moody of grabbing his wooden blackboard chalk rubber out thing and launching it at speed across the class to boys near the back. He always clearly aimed to miss though, just sending it over various heads. But one time he did this and missed the boy he was aiming at and instead smacked it straight into the face very hard of an innocent boy nearby. I remember the boy crying and the instant panic on that teachers face because the boy was cut. He legged it out the class leaving us alone and took the boy to the medical room.

Next day this boy shows up with a black eye and a cut forehead.

We never set eyes on that geography teacher ever again from that day forward. He just vanished and we were left guessing and nobody would say anything about him when asked.

Daily Mail - 24 January 1981

A blow-by-blow story of life in class.

Staffroom mole leaks secret of his school's beatings book.

By Andrew Loudon.

Teachers who want an end to corporal punishment yesterday branded a 1,030-pupil comprehensive as a school for scandal. They said that Litherland High, which handed out more than 1,800 slipperings last year, was "top of the beatings league table".

STOPP, the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment, highlighted the Merseyside school in a report on "the unacceptable face of British education".

Leaks from Litherland's punishment books show that in one fortnight 65 boys received between one and four strokes with an old tennis shoe. One boy was slippered five times in four days for offences such as missing detention, fooling about and being out of bounds.

The confidential files were given to STOPP by Left-wing English teacher Mr Alan Corkish, a 36-year-old ex-bricklayer. He said: "The rest of the staff are calling me a scab and the headmaster has stopped talking to me".

Mr Corkish, of Barons Hey, Cantril Farm, Liverpool, is a former building site shop steward. He has been a teacher for less than three years, since entering the profession as a mature student. Litherland is his first school.

He added: "It is the frequency of beatings that I am against, rather than the principle. The slipper is used so often, it is a waste of time".

He said he never had discipline problems in his class, but admitted that his size - 6ft 4in. and 17 stone - might have something to do with it.

Mr Corkish, who wore a ban-the-bomb badge in class yesterday, denied that he had a political motive. He said: "I'm a member of the Labour Party and I have read Marx but I would not label myself as a Marxist."

Litherland's headmaster, Mr Eric Colley, said: "Whatever your views on corporal punishment they are going to be wrong with somebody. There are many good things being done at this school, and this business is not going to help anybody."

The slipperings are carried out by two deputy headmasters using a size 10 tennis shoe in the presence of witnesses. The majority of punishments involve only one or two strokes.

Mrs Marlene Foster, 39, of Ince Avenue, Litherland, an opponent of the slipper, said her son Gary had a bottom "as red as a beetroot" after he was punished for writing on desks.

Gary, 13, said the slipper should be banned. But his brother, Wayne, 16, said it [...] was better than detention -- and most beating victims I spoke to agreed. [...]

"The headteacher, Mr Eric Colley, drew up plans in April 1981 to reinstate the cane in an attempt to reduce the amount of physical punishments"

This quote literally makes no sense.

It says rather a lot about Colley that he presided over a school like that. The man was no disciplinarian, he was an unpleasant fool at best, and at worst, well draw your own conclusions.

It's the mere threat of punishment that keeps discipline. Not around the clock thrashings day after day. That's not discipline, that's complete failure.

You look at Litherland in the early 80's and schools like that and then plant yourself back into todays media narratives and have to ask what white privilege those boys actually got. Going to a school like that could breed a lifetime of resentment. I don't think many of those pupils will have felt they had a very privileged start in life. Quite the reverse, that place will have actually damaged permanently a large number of people's future prospects and Liverpool in 1981 wasn't exactly thriving.

The culture of trouble seems to have been from many of the staff, not the pupils. But is it any wonder some of them began playing up when the teaching staff seemed to treat so many of them with utter contempt. Respect works both ways.

Flabbergasted at that school. Even more astonished it's not had a name change.

That school was brought up in the chamber of the House Of Commons by the local MP on 9th February 1981.

Here from Hansard.

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1981/feb/09/litherland-high-school

Good find Tony.

The trouble with that Litherland school back there in 1981 is that it seemed to normalise such behaviour on such an industrial scale.

So Alan Corkish who blew the whistle lost his job, oh how depressingly predictable.

Who the hell was the headmaster of that school at the time? Why was he not named in the item? The head at the end from another secondary was spot on when he said quite simply it needed to stop and his wise words about children not being cowards. Quite so.

One of the most intelligent things actually came from one of the teenage boys from that school when he said the out of control use of corporal punishment meant the teachers were weak. No fool that boy.

What this Litherland film ultimately proves is that corporal punishment simply does not work. A few weeks ago there was somebody on here (sorry I forget the name) who also proved that when they spoke of being caned for something they did out of school and being caught by a teacher, smoking with an older boy. He admitted it made no difference to his behaviour.

You have to imagine what the PE teachers were like at Litherland on the basis of that film. Probably a beating for wearing the wrong length socks or not making the cross country time, or a plimsoll across the arse for being too slow into the showers.

Shocking school. I looked to see if it still exists under that name, it does. I hope it's a million miles away from what it used to be but that's some bad reputation to live down even four decades on.

You can almost feel the low expectations that school must have had for all its children.

Apparently Mr. Corkish got sacked for his trouble -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litherland_High_School

Shocking that a genuinely decent teacher got dismissed for raising the bad behaviour of a bunch of really violent ones.

Litherland '81 sounds like the kind of place where 90% of the teachers must have actually disliked the sight of children. Good man Alan Corkish, at least you cared and did something.

1800 beatings per year. School is off for 12 weeks or so, leaving 40 weeks. Roughly 200 days out of 365. So in 200 days 1800 beatings. That's 9 beatings per day, as the film said literally one every 45 minutes. If that headmaster was the only one carrying out these slipperings/canings then he must have been attending to that almost full time every day of the year. How interessting that he wasn't named in that clip. It's a Dickensian level of brutality I would never have believed so recently without that film. If you're beating somebody with a slipper for not having a pen in class then I'd like to know what you have left for genuine troublemaker pupils and proper misbehaviour short of suspension or expulsion.

What a miserable and demoralising school that sounds. The culture of any institution is set from the top. Did the head teacher think he was running some kind of zero tolerance regime there? I mean, a beating for walking on the wrong side of the corridor! 1800 beatings in a year for just 400 boys. That's not a zero tolerance strict regime that's a failing school to put it bluntly, or worse. Whatever it was it did not work did it. I can scarcely believe that level of physical punishment is from an early 1980's secondary school in England. Good for that teacher and those parents who could see sense and what was going on. It sounds like staff morale must have been rock bottom too and the pupils bore the brunt. Totally miserable and shameful. I hope whoever ran that place was out on their ear not long afterwards. They looked decent kids and they deserved far better. That school looks like the kind of place that must have badly affected or even wrecked the life chances for so many able youngsters.

This from as recently as just 1981. You have to be concerned about any school behaving like this and wonder what lies behind it. Take a look;

Litherland High School, Liverpool in 1981.

https://youtu.be/lPIbcT8kjGU

Many thanks for your quite prompt reply to my question Alan.

A shame the discussion gets derailed now and again. I'm quite fascinated why your opinions fire things up on here. But I haven't read everything so maybe I missed something you said earlier on. In that case I'm sure someone here will show me what all the fuss is about with you.

My own father used to almost brag to me about how often he was caned in school by a black robed and hatted headmaster at his desk in his office and thought it did him good!

I still haven't had an answer to the point I made and question I asked on 18th August 2022 at 12:32

Just a lot of bluster and excuse. I still can't see anything there that was said which was untrue.

Paul J.

Nobody has created a narrative that abuse is everywhere, not even Alan. I think to suggest such is a caricature of that posters opinions, and I certainly don't agree with everything he says or the way he states it, in the same way I don't with his arch rival on here.

One thing I will say is that the threshold for the definition of "abuse" has been lowered considerably in recent years compared to thirty plus years ago. But we should not be placing todays threshold for such things onto those years thirty plus ago.

I liked Chris C's comment and endorse that in reply to your question to me.

Christopher C on 18th August 2022 at 18:51

I posed a question which I think was quite legitimate. Do you want to ban that when it doesn't suit the narrtive of abuse is everywhere?

Comment by: Christopher C on 18th August 2022 at 18:51
It's often not WHAT you say but HOW you say it Paul.

For me constant personal attacks undermine anyone's case, factual or not.


^^^^^^THIS ABOVE^^^^^^

Paul J on 18th August 2022 at 12:32
Has Andy said anything that wasn't true? It all looks quite accurate to me. I'm not sure your post is anything other than faux outrage about nothing.


In one word - plenty.

Faux outrage - that comes only from he who you're defending.

It's often not WHAT you say but HOW you say it Paul.

For me constant personal attacks undermine anyone's case, factual or not.

Kris on 17th August 2022 at 22:32

Has Andy said anything that wasn't true? It all looks quite accurate to me. I'm not sure your post is anything other than faux outrage about nothing.

I can't believe he's still at it. Now just picking fault with people for the sheer thrill and enjoyment of it.

When you start pedantic nitpicking at a 77 year old man (Gerald) who clearly wrote his own views and experience you show yourself up for what you're really all about.

Ged on 17th August 2022 at 08:33

BBC South Today is running a series of reports from their archive during August, one piece per night, that's where the Bognor Cane Company will have come from.

Gerald on 17th August 2022 at 17:53
You forgot to add the 'in my experience' line to your post because your post wasn't univeral and others had different experiences.

Tanya on 17th August 2022 at 18:17
You are of course free to wonder but others have recounted experiences of their own punishments, none has said anything about their mother being the subject of any beating but please, fantasise away, Alan will be very greatful for your ramblings.

James M on 17th August 2022 at 20:06
Corporal punishment of children is not an option these days so your question has no basis in reality. In times past, plenty of boys particularly were subject to corporal punishment, parents in the main laid down rules and consequences so it would not have been anything but the expected consequence of misbehaviour.

What a great question you pose Tanya. It makes you think what those kind of excessive corporal punishment teachers might have been like in the private home with their own. I think it was probably far easier to cane other people's boys, and a few girls no doubt.

Also, did some of these teachers really use it to maximum force they could muster at times?

That was also a decent summary from Gerald of his 50s upbringing. Broadly agree. A father that actively chose to strike a cane at his children deserves no respect whatsoever.

Would anybody on here be prepared to admit they would have felt okay doing so to their own son or daughter?

Comment by: Matthew on 16th August 2022 at 12:37
Reading about how the fathers of some posters subjected them to violence made me wonder if those fathers ever subjected their wives to violence.


Imagine being such a pathetic specimen of a man that you beat your wife and used corporal punishment on your children.

These teachers of olden times who brought out the cane against other people's kids in school - I wonder if many of them did the same back in their own family homes against their own kids?

A cane is a cane to me and I've plenty in the shed that I've used over the years for this and that around the place. They always make a very distictive sound if you swish them rapidly through the air.

But this talk of Bognor Cane Company has made me wonder if there were manufacturers of canes who actually made them specifically for schools in the past and to a spec designed purely as a punishment tool and nothing else, or whether a cane is just a cane whether you stick it in the garden or swipe it across somebody.

I was born back in 1945 and left school back in 1960 when I was only 15 years old. I was never caned in any of the schools I attended, either through luck or because I tended to knuckle down and get on with things. But at home I could give my parents plenty to chastise me about and both my parents would occasionally smack me, although I don't think they did this after I was about 11.

I had a large group of friends and although one or two of them did receive corporal school punishment I know of none who did so at home, other than with a firm hand. Once I saw a best friend given a major smacking right in front of me by his mother, I forget why now. She had no hesitation doing so while I looked on.

To me there is a major difference between corporal school punishment which was an ever present hazard in the 1950's even for well behaved boys who could fall foul very easily, and corporal punishment in the home by parents, in this case using a cane.

Whilst I fully accept there will have been some parents who used this method of chastisement I do think it is worth saying that it should not be considered the norm. I would have found it appalling if my parents had been caning me at home over anything I had got up to they didn't like. I would have felt the same if I had known it was happening to any of my friends. Fathers caning their children, and it would never be the mother would it, just the men caning the sons, is something to me that says you must be failing as a parent if you have to resort to such means.

I would be deeply suspicious of any father who thought the best way to deal with his childrens behaviour was to bring a cane out against them on a regular basis. No father should wish to do that to his child. When I grew up it would not have been seen as something generally used at home.

The fact is that there are people out there who have used this method of chastisement and taken an element of pleasure out of inflicting it. At my school in the late 1950's we had one Maths teacher, Mr Kitsinger, who had a reputation around the school for his relish with his cane or sending boys to the headmaster for it. It was said that he used it with a smirk or soemtimes a smile and would even whistle to himself while doing it in a side room partitioned adjacent to his maths classroom. I wouldn't know because I managed to escape such a fate. A boy at the desk next to mine received this for his constant inability to grasp doing long division at one point and told me he smiled broadly at him after he had punished him. It was a common observation.

We see so much nowadays about the mis treatment of children by their parents, never a week seems to go by. I have no doubt that when I grew up there would have been fathers out there who chose the use of a cane not just to bring their child into line or as a quick chastisement but for a more abusive ongoing relationship. A genuinely good father in the 1950's who was still incredibly strict with high standards and could keep his child in line would never have chosen to cane a son.

I respected my parents and knew how to behave and what would happen if I didn't. A quick smack here and there was expected, almost always instant and on the spur of the moment and could hurt, even through clothing. Caning is more premeditated. If my father had left an actual cane lying about the house ready and waiting for use against me and had actually done so in the manner a school would administer it I very much doubt I would have held him in the same respectful high esteem.