When I was 11 years old, my parents sent me to a Catholic private boys school in the North East of England – although it was partly a boarding school, it was close enough to our family home for me to be a ‘day boy’.
I should add that this was the 1970s, when corporal punishment of children was very normal, whether at home or indeed in school. When I was a little boy my mother smacked my bare bottom in the usual manner, but from about eight up all the discipline at home was handled by my father, who used a slipper and latterly (partly influenced by the arrangements at school) the cane.