Spare the Rod

Spare the Rod (1961)

It is London in the year 1960 and John Saunders enthusiastically begins his new teaching career at a tough slum-area school. His class are bored pupils in their last term before leaving. Will he handle the grave problems that lie ahead?

Date of release
1961-05-23
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 33m
Genres
Drama
Director
Leslie Norman

Casting

Interesting facts

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. 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.

Production

Michael Croft's novel of the same name was published in 1954, as an attack on corporal punishment and an explanation of the problems of teaching in secondary modern schools; it was not popular with the teaching profession. It was soon noticed by the film director Ronald Neame, who asked Croft to prepare a film script; however when he submitted the script to the Board of Film Censors he was told that such a film would be given an X certificate bec…

In 1959 Max Bygraves, who had grown up in similar circumstances in south London and was keen to play a dramatic part in a film of the book, met with Croft. Bygraves was unaware of the debate about the X certificate, but noted that Room at the Top had been a critical and commercial success despite receiving one; he was willing to put his own money into the project. Croft sold the film rights.

The finished film was passed with an A certificate.

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