Boyle tells of childhood beatings

Susan Boyle came second in Britain's Got Talent earlier this year

Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle has told how she was beaten by teachers who were ignorant about children with learning disabilities.

The Scottish singer said she was hit with a belt every day by teachers and taunted by classmates.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Boyle, 48, said: "You're looking at someone who would get the belt every day.

"I'm just I'm a wee bit slower at picking things up than other people. So you get left behind."

She said: "There was discipline for the sake of discipline back then. But it's all very different now. I think teachers are taught to understand children with learning disabilities a lot better."

Boyle also described how she used her faith to cope with the death of her mother Bridget in 2007.

Wowed judges

She said: "After mum died it didn't fully register until maybe six months after. That's when the loneliness set in and there was nobody around except my cat Pebbles.

"My confidence was pretty down at that time. A good way of levelling it out, I found, was to tell myself that even though she's not here physically, mentally and spiritually she is."

The church worker from Blackburn, West Lothian, became an unlikely international superstar after her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream wowed the audience and judges on Britain's Got Talent earlier this year.

Shortly after being beaten in the final of the show by dance troupe Diversity, Boyle was taken to the Priory Clinic in central London suffering from exhaustion.

But the singer has bounced back, with her new album, released next week, which is already expected to be the most pre-ordered of all time with global sales thought to be in excess of 100,000.

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