ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which they have affected the legislative and policy framework that has come to underpin developments in the rights of children and families to have their views heard in educational contexts. It explores the situation in the nineteenth century, as England and Wales were undergoing rapid social and attitudinal change. The chapter discusses the process by which parental concerns and preferences came to be accepted as an important part of the educational process in the twentieth century. It describes the related process by which the idea of student voice has become part of the intellectual and legislative process of education, outlines the situation in England and Wales. Attitudes to discipline had softened by the time of the Forster Act of 1870, which signalled the move to a national system of free elementary schooling in England and Wales.
