the Hon. Gerald Simons said yesterday.

"Parents and educators are not convinced corporal punishment leads to any long term changes in student behaviour,'' he said.

Since Britain abolished corporal punishment in its schools in the mid-1980s, Government has been working to get rid of the form of discipline as well, the Minister said.

The "seldom-used'' system now is that corporal punishment can only be administered by the principal or in his or her presence.

But with the passing of amendments to the Education Act sometime next year, corporal punishment will be banned altogether, he said.

"There has been no particular opposition to it,'' he said.

However, a school teacher told The Royal Gazette yesterday she had serious concerns about the power of teachers being limited any further.

The teacher, who did not want to be named, complained her hands were tied when it came to discipline.

"You can't hit them and they know,'' she said. "They also know, for example, that you can't keep them after a certain period of time in detention.

Discipline needs to be put back into the schools.'' She said she thought students had more power than they ought to.

"I feel a lot of the mainstream discipline I was exposed to was taken away from teachers,'' she said.

As a result, she said there was a "chronic'' discipline problem in Bermuda's schools.

Mr. Dean Furbert is also investigating East End Primary School teachers' reports they are spending more time "baby-sitting'' than teaching unruly kids.

The Association of School Principals last night reacted with "alarm'' to the front-page report.

Spokesperson Mr. Melvyn Bassett said schools were subject to all the ills society currently endures and "indiscipline is sadly one of them''.

He said he was not suggesting a serious discipline problem existed in local schools, but East End School was not isolated in its difficulties.

"We feel that it is regrettable that this school has been singled out and an incident of this nature is highlighted in the Press in this manner, when there are so many positive things happening in our schools on any given day,'' the Sandys Secondary principal said.

Mr. Simons said he firmly believed corporal punishment was not the answer to indiscipline.

Instead, he said, teachers need to learn better teaching practices and make use of the other punishment options available such as detention and suspension.

Said Mr. Simons: "One concern of corporal punishment is that it does condone the use of violence when faced with a frustrating social problem.

People need to be taught other means to deal with their problems.'' In that regard, he said, a Life Skills programme is soon to be implemented as part of the curriculum for Primary Seven pupils.

He said the class would deal with parenting skills and child abuse, "such as what is a good touch and what is a bad touch''.