The Osaka City Board of Education has decided that the municipally-run Sakuranomiya Senior High School will suspend entrance examinations for its physical education and sports health departments this year.

The decision was made in response to a demand made by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto in the wake of a suicide of the captain of the school¡¯s basketball team in December after being subject to corporal punishment by a teacher who served as the team¡¯s coach.

Mayor Hashimoto said that since use of violence by certain teachers at the school had become habitual and teachers, students and their parents had tacitly accepted it, the physical education-related departments of the school should not accept new students this spring to halt the ¡°continuation¡± of violence.