Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools to Transform Education for All Children

Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools to Transform Education for All Children

Children have a right to learn without violence in school. Corporal punishment is a violation of children’s
rights to respect for their physical integrity and human dignity, health, development, education, and
freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In their ratification
of international human rights laws and Sustainable Development Goal commitments, states are already
obligated and committed to prohibiting and eliminating corporal punishment in all settings, including schools.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child commits states to the prohibition of corporal punishment in all
settings and requires that States Parties ‘take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is
administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity’ (Article 28).

“Children do not lose their human rights by virtue of passing through the school gates. Education must
also be provided in a way that respects the strict limits on discipline reflected in article 28 (2) and
promotes non-violence in school.”- Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment Number 1, 2001

Corporal punishment in schools remains extremely common in many countries. A recent meta-analysis
of studies carried out between 1980 and 2017 found a lifetime prevalence of school corporal punishment
of 70% in Africa and Central America, and a past-week prevalence of more than 40% in Africa and
Southeast Asia.

A 2015 survey of 8-year-olds in India, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Peru found that an average of 40% of children
had experienced school corporal punishment in the past week, rising to 80% of children in India.9 In
the 2017-2018 school year more than 69,000 American children were struck at school, many of them
multiple times.

Evidence reviews identify at least twenty countries with lifetime prevalence rates of over 70%, and nine
countries showing rates over 90%.  However, even these figures are likely to be an underestimate since
children are often reluctant to report because of concern about repercussions and retribution. And, it is
important to remember that many children will also be subjected to violent punishment in other settings of
their lives. Taken together, prevalence data suggests that huge numbers of children worldwide experience
frequent corporal punishment in school, including some countries where it is a near-universal, weekly or
daily experience.