Corporal Punishment in Schools : Longitudinal Evidence from Ethiopia, India Peru and Viet Nam

Abstract

Globally the use of corporal punishment in schools is increasingly prohibited in law, yet in many contexts its use continues, even where outlawed. Proponents argue that it is an effective and non-harmful means of instilling iscipline, respect and obedience into children, while others point to a series of detrimental effects, including poor academic performance, low class participation, school dropout and declining psychosocial well-being. Establishing whether corporal punishment has lasting effects on children’s cognitive development and psychosocial well-being has been hampered by a lack of longitudinal data, especially from Low- and Middle-Income Countries. This paper is a contribution to the UNICEF Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children which is analysing how structural factors interact to affect everyday violence in children’s homes and communities in order to better inform national strategies for violence prevention.The paper brings together a life course and structural determinants framework withYoung Lives longitudinal data collected over four rounds on two cohorts of children in four countries: Ethiopia, India (the states of Andhra Pradesh andTelangana), Peru and Viet Nam. The authors focus on the Younger Cohort, which comprises approximately 2,000 children per country born in 2000/1. Children were selected using a two-stage sampling strategy. In each country 20 sites were selected, using semi-purposive methods to oversample poorer areas and then within the sites, households with children of the right age were randomly selected. The researchers draw on survey data collected from caregiver and child questionnaires to first examine the prevalence of corporal punishment at different ages and what this means for children in terms of what they most dislike about being at school. Second we use regression analysis to explore potential predictors of corporal punishment, as well as the associated effects of corporal punishment on concurrent and later cognitive development and psychosocial well-being outcomes.