When any divisive issue or thorny subject surfaces in the close-knit world of Irish education, everyone reaches for that jaded and time-honoured phrase - "the education partners".

"The education partners will solve it"... "The education partners have agreed"... "The education partners hope to solve the problem of"'...

The phrase is probably the most hackneyed in education journalism. Our education system is so fixated with consultation that even the most harmless of issues has to be argued over for months by the education partners.

You would think the partners welcomed debate and contributions from all quarters of the education system. But when you examine who these partners are, you see that diversity of opinion is not necessarily a priority.

The partners are, in the main, the Department of Education, teacher unions, parents and school management. Grouped loosely together one could describe them as the providers of education. Students could be described as the consumers.

Well if you accept this description, students must be one of the most neglected consumer groups ever. At second level in particular, they are represented on virtually none of the bodies that formulate education policy.

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) - a key body which has huge influence on what is taught in classrooms - has no second-level student representatives.

Where is the student representation on the school accommodation commission, the new education welfare board, or a host of other bodies?

The NCCA and others can convincingly argue that if it wanted second-level representation, where would it get it? Until recent months there has been no national students' organisation to fill seats on important NCCA committees.

Now there is, with the burgeoning Union of Secondary Students (USS), led by Lyndsey O'Connell, a former student of St Louis School in Rathmines.

But this does not explain the lack of student representation at local level. How many school boards of management have student representatives? This reporter cannot obtain figures, but one suspects they are almost negligible.

So the record at local level is poor, but it gets worse at national level. The Department of Education rarely consults second-level students on any of its policy decisions. Even at third level, students are still excluded from important decision-making bodies. While most of the universities have students represented on their governing bodies, few are willing to let them sit on important committees like finance and buildings.

However, to be fair to the Higher Education Authority (HEA), it does contain representatives from USI. But the latter is not so lucky when it comes to national pay agreements. While all kinds of voluntary bodies are included in this process, USI is not, though the National Youth Council is there to represent its interests indirectly.

Last week the Department of Education sought to tackle this democratic deficit, particularly at second level. The Minister, Dr Woods, said he would be encouraging all second-level schools to set up student councils. While these are welcome and provide students with a forum to process their concerns, they are of limited scope.

Although the Education Act 1998 says schools must encourage the setting up of councils, it is not clear that schools must have a council.

But what undermines the councils further is that they can be completely ignored by the school authorities. So in a sense, the councils operate on sufferance.

Rather than depend on these councils, maybe the Department should look in the long term at guaranteeing student representation on school boards.

If you look at their current composition, all kinds of people can qualify for a place. People who have never had children in the school can gain a place on the board of management, while those actually receiving an education in the classrooms are not represented.

Their parents may be all right, but what is so wrong with the idea of the school captain or head girl being on the school board? The answer from many - but certainly not all - school principals is that students are passing through the school and do not always have an appreciation of the school's long-term strategic needs. They also often regard 17- and 18-year-olds as not being mature enough for such a representative role.

For some reason our education system regards fifth and sixth-year pupils as children rather than young adults. A person graduates slowly from being a child to a young adult, but our education system seems to imagine this happens when somebody finishes their Leaving Cert and enters college. The cut-off point between maturity and immaturity is very arbitrary.