Keil School in Dumbarton, which closed 25 years ago, has been heavily criticised by Lady Smith who has published the findings of the Scottish Child Abuse inquiry which she has chaired, the BBC has reported.

For five decades teachers and older pupils subjected boys, and later girls, to beating, mocking and sexual abuse

Because the school never managed to attract enough fee-paying pupils the school cut costs by delegating tasks to pupils as a “cost-saving measure” assuming they could be trusted to look after the welfare of other children – “a serious mistake” according to Lady Smith.

This led to pupils living in a “permanent state of fear” from extreme abuse that in some cases amounted to “torture”,

The worst cases of abuse by staff happened in the 1980s and 1990s by William Bain, who sexually abused boys “on an almost daily basis”, and “predatory paedophile” David Gutteridge.

Keil became a “tough school” where boys were expected to endure violence and suffer in silence, however, Lady Smith said “strong, successful rugby players usually had a happy existence, but it was tough for others such as, for example, the aesthete, the thinker, the actor, the musician, the quieter individual, or the child who liked individual sports.”