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Education and Skills Bill

As the Minister has told us twice, the amendments were all tabled in another place by the Liberal Democrat peer Lady Walmsley. Few people, if any, would deny the advantages of a school giving pupils a voice in developing policies that affect the children at that school. That is increasingly accepted as best practice, and the best performing schools in the state sector will invariably have a long-established route through which pupils can express their views on key aspects of how the school is run. I am a particularly strong supporter of school councils, not least because the views expressed by those councils are often as strong on issues of discipline and behaviour as my own and those of my party. On rare occasions, some school councils that I have met go beyond even our zero-tolerance approach to discipline and behaviour. An ordered and safe school environment is a pre-occupation of pupil opinion in many of the schools that I have visited, even those where behaviour is good. As my noble Friend Lord Elton said in Committee in another place:"““One of the most convenient forums for this””—" pupil voice—"““is a school council where matters of discipline naturally come up quite quickly for discussion between the pupils and staff.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 July 2008; Vol. 703, c. 229.]"