Kenya - Mass school punishment

This 35-second clip taken with a cameraphone is slightly confusing but clearly there are a lot of students who have been made to lie on the ground. Towards the end of the clip there is a brief long shot of some of the students being whipped or caned in turn in a rough-and-ready manner.

The voice-over commentary is presumably by one of the students. The underlying story seems to be that an offence has been committed but the teachers can't find out who did it, so they are beating everybody. Plainly this is unreasonable and contrary to natural justice; that would be so irrespective of the kind of punishment used, so the argument here is not about corporal punishment per se.

The fact remains that school corporal punishment was unequivocally outlawed by the Children Act 2001 so, assuming this clip is recent, it tends to confirm what has already been reported, that schools are ignoring the ban and continuing, illegally, to cane students.

Personally I would add that, quite aside from the legality issue, if teachers are going to use CP, this kind of indiscriminate, slapdash beating (all too common, it seems, in some parts of Africa) is not a proper or sensible way to do it.

HERE IS THE CLIP: