After many years in teaching and being in charge of three respected schools you have taken a job with the Education Board. It is 1962 and the job is going well. You have visited seventy four schools, some you have rated highly, some lowly. Your reputation always goes before you, people are nervous when they find out the Inspector of their school is you.

Little notice is given of your visits, usually just two days, not quite a spot check, but something for the less competent Headmistress or Headmaster to be wary of.

It is mid afternoon, the visit to this well tended, well equipped school has gone well. Laboratories are well stocked, classes bright and engaging, the gardens immaculate, and the girls well behaved. You are walking down a corridor and you decide to do one of your favourite tricks, stop at a random door and ask to inspect the room. You do so and what a shock you get!

You watch in amazement as two girls are in an embrace, kissing, and fingering each other! The Headmistress sees her ten star rating collapse before her eyes…

“What on this Good Lord’s Earth are you two doing in here, why are you not in your classes!!? And as for your actions! This is the School Inspector! You have just let our whole school down! Get out here, and don’t bother pulling your knickers up!”

The Headmistress picks up a cane from the rack, which every classroom has. You had already rated discipline in the school as 9.

“Both of you! Bend over those desks, right now!”

You stand and place your brief case on the floor, to watch the punishment, a chance, first hand, to witness the school’s discipline in progress. You make notes….a) well stocked with plimsols, tawses, and canes in every room. b) quick to take action, girls obey immediately. You ask, “if these girls became boisterous, what would you do?”

She stares at you between the trembling two girls, and answers “I would assemble the whole school, in the hall, have the girls strip naked and give them thirty-six each with no mercy, over the vaulting horse!”

You write down note c) obviously has a total discipline system which keeps the naughty girls in order…..apart from the odd rebels, which every school has.

“Come on Kate, come on Samantha, get bent over and push your bottoms out for Mr.Whippy to kiss them!”

You make note d) out of 850 girls, she knew their names. Her use of strict, slightly unorthodox language, is excellent.

The Headmistress looks at you as the girls arrange themselves. “All my staff have been on the Disciplinary Course, and go for a refresher every year. I myself practise my swing regularly, and use my variety of Corporal punishment implements every day to keep my girls in their place! This is a no nonsense institution, woe betide any girl who puts up even the slightest resistance! I assure you, that this cane will ensure that these girls will be sleeping on their tummies tonight!”

Tapping the girl you now know as Kate, on the bottom she told her to push her bottom right out and not to be a silly girl and hop about. “Keep still throughout young lady! Any silliness and we start again, with prefects holding you in place!”

You write down note e) …obviously gives the prefects responsibility, and threats roll off her tongue easily.

To be continued….