Today, London, 31 May 1986

Anger over 60 canings at Kinnock's old school

One in six boys hit

By Winston Grant-Evans

LABOUR leader Neil Kinnock's old school was last night accused of caning "an unusually high" number of 12 and 13-year-old boys.

Inspectors found that 60 of the 360 lower school pupils at Lewis Boys' Comprehensive, Pengam, Mid-Glamorgan, had been caned in the past year. But not one boy in the upper school had been beaten.

In a report issued yesterday, the inspectors said: "The absence of canings in the upper school reflects a recognition among staff there that other sanctions may be more effective."

Mr Kinnock, who has pledged that a Labour government will scrap the cane, was at the school in the early 1950s and was himself beaten. He has attacked the cane as "a repulsive ritual which brutalises."

He once said: "It ceased to have any effect on me after the second occasion but what I recall at the age of 11 is that my dignity was grossly offended by having to bend over and be flogged."

The Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment said that the situation at the school now was "absolutely outrageous". It called for a Mid-Glamorgan County Council inquiry into why lower school teachers were "cane happy."