When Salma's name was called out by her madrassa teacher during Koran class, it was often only a matter of seconds before she felt a stinging pain on her back, her buttocks, or her palms.

At times she'd frown and put on a brave face when her teacher laid into her with a cane for mispronouncing Arabic words or forgetting a verse. But in most cases the staged bravery would give way to tears.

After the punishment, Salma, then 12, would join her dozen or so female friends, who would be seated in a circle in their Asian teacher's living room - which doubled as a madrassa on weekday nights - awaiting their own name to be called.

“We would sit in the circle and read and he would walk around and hit you if you were talking or chattering to your friends or getting the words wrong,” said Salma, now 16. “He hit everyone there at one time or another,” she said. “The madrassa was in a house - boys in one room, girls in another.”

She admitted that the girls got away lightly compared with boys, even though at times they also got their “ears twisted” before or after the caning.

“The boys always got more severe hits than the girls,” she said. “My little brother hated going to school because of that.”

Just as painful as the throbbing red marks left on Salma's skin by her teacher was her mother's refusal to do anything about them. “Mum would say, 'You deserve it for not learning or for misbehaving',” she said.

Salma eventually persuaded her mother to move her to another more formal, mosque-based madrassa in Rochdale that has a policy against physical punishment.