Singapore will require all schools to follow a unified disciplinary framework from 2027 that explicitly includes corporal punishment as a tool against bullying and cyberbullying, Education Minister Desmond Lee confirmed to parliament on 5 May. Under existing rules, boys aged nine and older can receive one to three strokes of a rattan cane — applied to the buttocks or palms — for serious offences including fighting, vandalism, and gang activity, with girls exempt and subject instead to detention or suspension. The expansion draws sharp international criticism: the World Health Organization links corporal punishment exclusively to negative outcomes in children, including developmental harm and increased aggression, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges signatory states to abolish it — though Singapore, true to form, has historically resisted outside pressure on the practice, refusing to relent even when diplomatic interventions were made on behalf of foreign nationals sentenced to caning.