Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death

Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.”He also cited Proverbs 13:24, – “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him”, as well as 22:15 – “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him”.Corporal punishment was outlawed in British state schools in 1986, and in independent schools in 1998. But the school in Liverpool, backed by more than 40 others, is seeking a judicial review of the ban.Mr Friel said the Government interpreted the law to mean a “complete ban on any physical punishment in any school at all”. But this would breach the rights of Christians to practise their religion according to their beliefs, he said.The group is asking the court to decide if the 1996 Education Act, later amended by section 131 of the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act, bans all physical punishment in all schools. Parents were entitled to delegate their “right of physical punishment” of their children to somebody acting on their behalf, Mr Friel said.Phil Williamson, the headmaster of the Christian Fellowship School, wants teachers at the school, which costs £1,920 a year to attend, to be able to smack the youngest children on the hand or leg, once their parents sign a consent form.Mr Williamson said: “For older pupils, they could be smacked on the backside with something akin to a ruler, although it would be a bit wider, about three or four inches.” For girls, the punishment would be administered by a female member of staff, he added.The Liverpool school takes pupils from all Christian denominations aged four to 16.Mr Williamson said that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had ruled when he took the campaign to the court in 1999 that there was nothing to prevent schools smacking children if their parents approved.He said his school had used smacking “sparingly” in the past and had found it a more effective “tool” than temporary suspensions. “We are not aiming at a suppressive, draconian, Dickensian regime; we are wanting children to feel secure when they come to school,” he said.Mr Williamson said he would consider going to the Court of Appeal if he lost.The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children condemned the High Court challenge. A spokesman said: “Teachers and children’s campaigners fought long and hard to win the abolition of corporal punishment in all schools.

We should all be proud of this and be absolutely steadfast in defending it.”The judgment will be made on a date to be fixed.*A headteacher at the centre of an inquiry over allegations that she had slapped nine pupils at a village school resigned the day before the before her disciplinary hearing, a spokesman for Northumberland County Council said yesterday. Elizabeth Carey, 52, was in charge of the 10-pupil Milfield County First School in Wooler for six years. She was suspended despite the Crown Prosecution Service dropping assault charges against her She has always denied the allegations.. David Trimble was poised – so we all thought – to emerge once again as the hero of the Mission: Impossible that is Northern Irish politics.

David Trimble was poised – so we all thought – to emerge once again as the hero of the Mission: Impossible that is Northern Irish politics. His career, which seemed over 10 days ago, was about to make another miraculous comeback when his judgement was vindicated by the IRA putting beyond use a substantial quantity of weapons.Mr Trimble expected this historic event to trigger a surge of support for the principles of the Good Friday Agreement and for his re-election as First Minister. He could be forgiven that mistake: IRA decommissioning was the issue on which the unionist opponents of the Agreement had staked everything. He gambled against them that it would happen – he saw, as John Hume and Tony Blair saw, that the republican movement was genuinely ready for the “ground-breaking move” which finally occurred last week.It took a long time coming, however, and so Mr Trimble’s personal jubilation was not matched by a corresponding warmth among unionists in general. Unionist support for the Good Friday Agreement had been so badly corroded by the IRA’s repeated failure to fulfil the obligations signed up to by Gerry Adams three years ago that when the impossible did happen, its effect was muffled.In any case, it hardly matters why Peter Weir and Pauline Armitage were so obdurate as to refuse to accept the word of the independent commissioners led by General John de Chastelain, although the transcript of their conversation with him only exposes their own stupidity. Mr Weir and Ms Armitage could not accept that the event at which arms were put beyond use should have taken place in secret. General de Chastelain was forced to reiterate, gently, that this was so that the paramilitaries did not feel they were “surrendering”.

It must be suspected that no form of decommissioning would have satisfied those two. Their votes were clearly beyond persuasion by reason.The question is what should be done now. The obvious solution, when an elected assembly is deadlocked over the election of a leader, would be fresh elections for the assembly itself. Unfortunately, there are no grounds for thinking that such elections would resolve the deadlock. On the contrary, while the opinion polls confirm the absence of a surge of support for Mr Trimble, the likelihood is that the anti-Agreement unionists would increase their numbers and make it less likely that anyone could satisfy the conditions for election as First Minister. Those conditions require the First Minister to win a majority in the Assembly as a whole, but also separate majorities among the unionist and nationalist members.