Women in Westminster: In Conversation With Dame Rachel de Souza
As Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza ensures that government, public bodies, and others fulfil their responsibilities to England’s children. As part of our Women in Westminster series, PoliticsHome sat down with de Souza to learn more about why children’s voices must be heard
During our one-to-one conversation with Dame Rachel de Souza, it somehow feels like there are many more people in the room.
At every table that she sits around, de Souza never forgets that she is bringing the views of millions to the discussion. Those are the voices of children from schools, youth clubs, custody, immigration centres, and many other settings.
Her commitment to ensuring children’s voices are heard is driven by a straightforward personal and professional vision.
“I want this country to be the best place in the world for kids to grow up,” she simply says. “That is my position. I am never going to get everything I want. We're not going to get utopia, but we can make it a hell of a lot better.”
That aspiration – to improve the life chances of children – has been a golden thread throughout de Souza’s career. The Scunthorpe-born former teacher, headteacher, and founder of a multi-academy trust blazes with passion when she speaks about making sure that the voices of children are never ignored.
De Souza’s background in frontline delivery is something of a rarity in Whitehall. It seems to have furnished her with an acute awareness of the lived reality that is at the sharp end of sometimes abstract policy discussions.
“I've been really lucky to work at such an exciting time where education reform has been at the forefront,” she explains. “I wanted to focus that spirit of reform onto the things around children, whether that's mental health, health, and all of the wider services around them.”
It is clear that, for de Souza, influence is always about impact. In every part of our conversation, what comes across is a senior leader who remains firmly rooted in the reality of the lives and experiences of England’s children.
De Souza’s down-to-earth approach seeps into every area of our discussion, and its origins can be found in her own childhood. It is striking that the people who inspired de Souza as a girl and young woman were not the public figures of the day. Instead, they were the people she saw in her hometown every day.
“The women that I grew up with were the women that inspired me,” she says recalling growing up in a steel industry town during the miners’ strike. “The political leaders and the public voices were often male, but it was the women who were really strong in terms of organisation.”
Unsurprisingly, given her subsequent career, de Souza has positive memories of the teachers who shaped her life and gave her the confidence to become the first in her family to attend university.
“That ability of educators to really change people's lives, whatever their background, was something that benefited me,” she says. “For me, those teachers were a really big deal.”
De Souza taught in classrooms, led multiple schools, and was the founding Chief Executive of a multi academy trust, receiving a damehood for services to education in 2014. Her commitment to champion the voices of children moved to the national stage in 2021.
“I realised doing what we'd done before lockdown was not going to solve the problems after lockdown,” she tells PoliticsHome, explaining her motivation to take on the role of Children’s Commissioner for England.
But de Souza, who was used to exercising considerable autonomy as a head teacher, found a very different working culture in Whitehall.
“Oh, my goodness. When I first came to Westminster it was completely different,” she tells PoliticsHome. “I thought ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to influence politicians and services?’ It was like starting again. It was very exciting, but it was also pretty terrifying.”
What steered de Souza through those challenges was always remembering that when she speaks, she does so on behalf of those whose voices are not always heard. And she admits that speaking truth to power is not always a comfortable process.
“You have to keep a moral compass,” she says. “That's why these roles are not easy. They are not just about being popular. Sometimes you're very unpopular, but it's still the right thing to do.”
Since coming into the post, de Souza has focused on creating mechanisms to capture the voices and views of the nation’s children and to use that knowledge and data to challenge, support, and shape policy.
The Big Ask survey in 2021 gathered views from over half a million children in England. More recently, ahead of the 2024 general election, the Children’s Commissioner carried out another survey called The Big Ambition. This was to take the pulse of the nation’s children regarding what they would like to see from politicians.
“The big things coming out this time were that only one in five children felt that those in power listen to them,” she says. “Children do think that politicians are powerful. They've seen them close their schools, they've seen them roll out the vaccine, but they just don't think they're hearing them. And that's why my mission for the next three years is to make sure that they do.”
That is critical, particularly in a world where technology is having both a positive and negative impact on the lives of the nation’s children. And that, de Souza believes, could have a long-term impact.
“We are raising a generation that's facing something completely new and it's difficult because we can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” de Souza says about the risks of online harm. “So, we have to help the kids navigate it.”
In this, as with everything else, de Souza is always pragmatic, recognising the reality of children’s lives today and seeking ways to address that. However, her pragmatism never masks her fundamental optimism about creating a better future for children.
“Transformation is possible,” she says. “I think this is worth doing because change is possible.”
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