SINGAPORE - She was expecting to surprise her son on his 14th birthday, and had travelled for more than four hours on coach from Singapore to Selangor, Malaysia, to see him.

But instead, Miss Noridayu Zainuddin, 40, found her son Imann with a swollen face and running a high fever - the result of a teacher in his religious school hitting him in the face with a slipper so hard that he suffered a fracture.