Forum: Like-for-like study needed to measure effect of school discipline policies

In her letter “Gender equality must extend to school discipline policies” (May 15), Dr Kanwaljit Soin states that bullying by females in schools has not escalated despite girls being exempt from caning.

She concludes that schools can reduce bullying by boys without resorting to physical punishment, by applying the disciplinary methods that have ostensibly resulted in non-escalation of bullying by girls.

However, Dr Soin produced no evidence showing the non-escalation of bullying by girls to be the result of school policies rather than innate differences between the sexes in the kinds of violence they display. 

Studies show that boys generally exhibit higher rates of physical aggression than girls, who tend to favour verbal or relational harassment (such as ostracism).

Schools tend to reserve caning for acts of physical violence. Generally, when it comes to non-physical bullying, boys are disciplined in a similar way to girls.

So in comparing like for like, the disciplinary effect of physical punishment on boys – compared with its absence for girls – should be measured against the relative rates of physical bullying by the two sexes, adjusted to account for the naturally low level of physical aggression by females compared with males.

Ben Gibran