Conservative leader David Cameron has hailed a Black Country school as a perfect role model for boosting pupils’ learning and ensuring classroom discipline.

Mr Cameron visited Walsall Wood Primary School yesterday to meet pupils and head Robert Trawford, recently named the top head in the West Midlands. The school has also been recognised as the most improved in Walsall in the last year. The Tory leader’s arrival coincided with his party’s plans to rid schools of persistent troublemakers.

These include physically restraining misbehaving pupils, ending the right of appeal for exclusions, banning items such as mobile phones which cause classroom disruption and not closing special schools.

On an hour-long visit to the Brownhills Road school he spoke with Year 5 and Year 6 about his role as an MP and his own time as a student where history was his favourite subject. He said other schools could follow its example on uniform, pupils facing the teacher and using a whiteboard.