A private school in Bradford has lost its battle to bring back corporal punishment.

Bradford Christian School, in Bolton Woods, was one of four to take an appeal to the House of Lords yesterday.

A delegation of teachers and parents claimed at a hearing before five Law Lords last December that the 1999 ban on corporal punishment infringed their human rights.

Yesterday the Lords ruled that lifting the ban would not be in the interest of children.

Phil Moon, head teacher at the Livingstone Road school, which has 200 pupils aged four to 16, said he was disappointed. "We understand the climate in which we were making this appeal but, at the same time, the Government is struggling to maintain discipline in schools with the strategies it has set out," he said. "It seems we were disciplined when we were making something work and doing it with integrity."

Mr Moon said the decision to launch the appeal had led many of the worst cases of child abuse to be highlighted.

But he insisted: "These extreme cases that we see in the press are awful for the children but, because of these extreme cases, parents who used corporal punishment carefully and with restraint would have that taken away.

"Working with children every day, we see that the natural authority that exists between parents or teachers and children is being eroded, and just to have the knowledge that corporal punishment could be used infrequently and with restraint would have been helpful."

Mr Moon said that, when the legal battle began about five years ago, 90 per cent of parents supported corporal punishment.

Schools involved in the appeal argued they were set up specifically to provide a Christian education based on Biblical observance and this meant the use of corporal punishment on a limited basis as part of their beliefs.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, giving the lead ruling, said their beliefs "involve inflicting physical violence on children in an institutional setting".

"Parliament was bound to respect the claimants' beliefs in this regard, but was entitled to decide that manifestation of these beliefs in practice was not in the best interests of children," he said.

Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal have already thrown out the argument that the 1996 Education Act, which prohibits smacking, infringes parents' and teachers' religious freedoms and right to an education of their choice.