Victorian Presteigne - school punishments

Presteigne
School life

	Punishment and discipline	Glossary
	Victorian teachers were stricter than the teachers of today and often used to beat the pupils to make them behave. In the early days of the schools the teachers found it hard to get pupils used to what was expected of them. An early example of this came at Presteigne British School in March, 1868 when the Baptist minister visited to hear the older pupils read. The school Log Book records that "..one of the boys misbehaved during his presence, and I had to punish him for it after he left; he pinched another boy while reading, and thus caused him to laugh..."	truant - a child who stays away from school without permission.

The entry goes on:
"... it is the same boy who played the truant, and causes the whole of the disturbance in the school: the work being twice as easy when he is absent: I don’t like to expel him owing to his parents, who are very nice respectable people, & desire me always to do justice to the boy."

In Victorian schools the children did their ordinary rough work on slates with a piece of chalk or a rough pencil. The Head teacher at New Radnor school punished children for copying from each other's slates.