Spare the Rod is a 1961 British social drama directed by Leslie Norman and starring Max Bygraves, Geoffrey Keen, Donald Pleasence and Richard O'Sullivan.

[2][3] The film was based on the 1954 novel by Michael Croft and deals with an idealistic schoolteacher coming to a tough area of East London to teach in a secondary modern school at a time when such establishments were largely starved of attention and resources from education authorities and were widely regarded as dumping grounds with sub-par teaching standards, for the containment of non-academically inclined children until they reached the school-leaving age.

"[4] John Saunders, a supply teacher with progressive anti-corporal punishment views, arrives to take up a post at Worrell Street School in a socially deprived area of East London.

His view that corporal punishment is the only way to maintain even some semblance of order in the classrooms ("You'll never be able to handle them unless you're as tough as they are") is anathema to Saunders, who states his intention to try all other methods of discipline rather than resort to physical violence.

All share the view that it is useless to try to provide a meaningful education to children whom they have already written off as leaving school only to drift into dead-end jobs, and that the best they can hope to do is to maintain some degree of order in the classroom.

His assault on the boy escalates beyond reasonable bounds, with him delivering roughly ten strokes of the cane to his left hand, which was twisted behind his back, and Saunders has to step in to restrain him.

Donald Pleasence gives a striking display of suffocated loathing as the nicotine-poisoned, disenchanted headmaster, wide-eyed with panic even in his most violent moments of harangue; and the pupils, particularly Richard O'Sullivan's Harkness, are well enough played.

Melodrama rampages throughout an incredible Blackboard Jungle riot scene, a visit fraught with menace to the home of a sexy 15-year-old schoolgirl, the ranting and raving of dear old Geoffrey Keen as the one openly sadistic teacher, and two Unjust Beatings.