A group of teachers and parents at independent private Christian schools yesterday failed in a renewed court bid for the right of staff to smack pupils with parental consent.
The Court of Appeal upheld a High Court ruling that the law against corporal punishment, even in private schools, was not a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom to practise religious beliefs.
The legal challenge was led by the Christian Fellowship School in Liverpool.
Its head teacher, Phil Williamson, argued that, when he took the campaign to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 1999, it ruled that there was nothing to prevent schools smacking children if their parents approved.
But the Government disagreed, insisting that corporal punishment was illegal under the 1996 Education Act.
In all the schools involved, teachers and parents agreed that, in appropriate cases, discipline should be enforced by the use of swift corporal punishment by teachers.
But the three appeal judges ruled yesterday that physical punishment for an offence committed at school could still be achieved by contacting the parent and leaving it to him or her to carry out reasonable chastisement.