It's been 20 years since corporal punishment was banned in schools.

Ruth Lumley spoke to three teachers about discipline and whether current methods are as effective. Norman Humphreys, 70, is a former deputy head teacher of Imberhorne School in East Grinstead, who believes the word "no" is missed in modern discipline.

Parents thought teachers were gods when he was a boy and if pupils defied them they would often be punished by their parents again when they got home.

Mr Humphreys retired ten years ago after 27 years as a deputy head and during his career he gave the cane as punishment just ten times.

He said: "I went to a grammar school where discipline was simple but fair. There were certain things you did not do and when you got caught you were caned on the backside or you were kept in to do lines.

"When I became a teacher I always thought the pupils were pretty good but there was always an exception. The majority of children are still good today but they get bad publicity. Life was easy for me when I was younger - with all the choices they have today it is harder for them."

Mr Humphreys, of Lynton Close, East Grinstead, spoke at a National Union of Teacher's (NUT) Conference in Eastbourne in 1987, the year the punishment was banned.

The topic had been debated between teachers, parents and the Government for many years.

In 1983 Sussex teachers attacked the Government's decision allowing parents to exempt their children from corporal punishment, saying it would lead to injustices, and called for an end to corporal punishment for all children.

Mr Humphreys said: "Teachers want to do the best they can for the children and you have got to have discipline.

Quite often parents expect teachers to pick up the ends and today's society has become a bit fragmented.

"At the conference in 1987 it was made clear that if you were going to stop caning you had to find another form of discipline which would be effective. It was stopped because it was unfair.

Boys got caned and girls didn't.

"There were plenty of models in France and Spain to replace caning which involved informing the parents and other forms of discipline.

Some of them involved financial penalties for the parents. I only caned on ten different occasions, for bullying, vandalism and truancy."

Newly qualified teacher Anna Ward has just completed her first year at secondary Angmering School. The 27-year-old, of Loveys Lane, Yapton, near Bognor, went to a grammar school where she says most of the pupils were well behaved and the teachers were firm but fair. She said: "If you got caught smoking you were suspended, if you messed about in class you would get a lunchtime detention.

"The teachers were terrifying, which is why you did not muck around.

"Now, as a teacher, the kids who we have a problem disciplining are the ones who do not receive the parental support. When a child breaks the rules you follow school procedures and you contact the parents if there is a really bad incident.

"Punishments usually depend on the offence but if a child is being bad my general reaction would be to ask them to leave the classroom and then I would speak to them. If their behaviour continues to be bad we would remove them and put them in another class and I would always follow it up with a detention."

She added it can be difficult to keep a child in line without the support of the parents, especially as children are aware of their rights, knowing there are certain things teachers are not allowed to do.

She said: "I had one child who I kept in every lunchtime until he got bored of it and he knew that if he stopped misbehaving he would not be kept in. But when you are trying to teach children not to be violent then a punishment like the cane is not appropriate."

Dr Stuart Newton, 62, of Woodlands Close, Peacehaven, is a biology teacher at Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College (BHASVIC) and was headteacher at a school in Croydon until 2001. He has been a teacher for 40 years.

He was caned as a pupil at Worthing High School for Boys. He said: "When I was at school discipline was very firm but it was not barbaric. And bearing in mind the overwhelming majority of boys wanted to learn, the parents of most pupils were supportive. I was caned once for running in the corridors on the very morning the head had said not to do it. From a teacher's perspective, I have caned children and when I became a head in 1980 I caned a number of boys."

By 1984 Dr Newton decided that the cane was not the best form of punishment and banned teachers from using it at the school where he was teaching three years before it was banned nationally.

He said: "When I was seconded to a school in Lewisham things were difficult. It was not because we couldn't use the cane but because politicians had started interfering with any sort of discipline.

"Even though the cane was banned there was not the catastrophic decline in discipline that people thought there might be.

"Discipline is not such an easy thing to carry out nowadays but it is not because we have lost the cane.

The word that seems to emanate from central government is that discipline is a good thing providing you do not have to do it, which is ludicrous.

"In the late 1980s the DfES started producing reams of papers on discipline and it was the young people themselves who suffered because the majority do want to get on and learn but when you have youngsters who know they can get away with anything they disrupt everyone else.

"Every time you caned a youngster it was necessary to write his name in the punishment book and when you look at these books now you find the same names were written down every week and you think, if this was meant to be a deterrent why were they misbehaving over and over again.

"The last boy I caned in 1984 was 14 years old. He exploded into tears and said, I am sorry Sir, I will never do it again'. But a few years earlier I had caned a boy and it had no effect on him at all."

Last week The Argus was shown BHASVIC's old caning book from the 1970s.

We asked teenagers what they thought about discipline in schools today

Amanda Zbinden, 18, of Church Close, Burgess Hill, said: "I do not think discipline in school works any more. I did work experience in an infant school and pupils were picking up swear words and they were only five."

Tom Fowler, 18, of Grand Avenue, Hassocks, said: "I do not think discipline works because there is no respect any more. It is fine here at BHASVIC because we all want to learn and to be here but in secondary school it is quite difficult."

Laura Wiliams, 18, of Bramble Gardens, Burgess Hill, said: "To a certain extent discipline works but you are always going to have rebellious pupils.

"As for caning, I do not think anybody has the right to determine whether you should hit a child."

Ed Holt, 18, of Upper Street, Fittleworth, near Pulborough, said: "Discipline needs to be a lot firmer.

"I do not think physical punishment is correct but I think punishment like detention should be used more often."

Pippa Fielding Smith, 18, of Clayton Avenue, Hassocks, said: "Detention is not effective because often it is just people sitting around in a classroom getting bored. Community work such as picking up litter would be better."