The new children’s commissioner says her experience of tackling off-rolling and exclusions when she was chief executive of a multi-academy trust will help her to work with the rest of the profession in ending the practices altogether.

Dame Rachel De Souza, who was formally appointed children’s commissioner this month, denied accusations by MPs at the end of last year that there had been “a pattern of off-rolling and exclusions” in her schools at Inspiration Trust, in Norfolk.

But she says she hopes her experience of dealing with the problems will mean that headteachers will now talk to her about the issues in order to “get the system right”.

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She said: “The children’s commissioner absolutely wants to see exclusion down to nothing and off-rolling not happen, and to do that we need to work with the entire profession.

Dame Rachel De Souza keen to tackle off-rolling and exclusions

“I can bring my experience. Once we’d identified some of those issues - it took me a couple of years to really bring the entire organisation [the Inspiration Trust] round and learn all the things we needed to do to try to get that better and sort that out.

“I think some of the answers are structural: we need more alternative provision. I’d love to see trusts and groups of schools with really good alternative provision so we can have revolving doors, you know, and get children back into mainstream.”

Dame Rachel was accused by the chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon of presiding over a “survival of the fittest” culture at Inspiration Trust, where Ofsted inspectors questioned leaders over “potential off-rolling”.

She told the committee: “There was that one small incident that we found, but, you know, I have been through those particular issues. We’ve also had loads of fantastic reports on inclusion.”

Dame Rachel, who today launches “the largest consultation with children ever undertaken in England”, said she wants to question children themselves about off-rolling, including those in the secure sector as well as those in care and in alternative provision.

She said “ I want to know what they feel about it, if that’s an issue - what they feel about how they are, where they are.”

She added: “It’s certainly not acceptable and, of course, we don’t want it…and actually having to deal with some of those things myself [off-rolling and exclusions] in my own schools - when I found them - is actually a real kind of driver to me sort of getting serious about the children’s commissioner’s role.”

She added: “I want this to be a real priority and I think the fact that I have had to tackle some of these problems in my own schools and put some of those things right means that I hope  headteachers and others can talk to me and know that it’s not about judgement or blame, but it’s about what we can do together as a system to get it right.”

There was controversy last year over off-rolling at Inspiration Trust’s East Point Academy after an Ofsted report questioned the school’s practice.

The Ofsted report said leaders of the trust could not show why removing students from the school roll in Year 11 was in their best interests.

Inspectors had gone into East Point because chief inspector Amanda Spielman was “concerned about issues raised with Ofsted about pupil movement and potential off-rolling”.

The Ofsted report did not describe the student movement at East Point Academy as “off-rolling.” However, a Tes investigation revealed that Ofsted did find recent evidence of off-rolling at the school even though this was not explicitly referred to in the published report. 

The documents obtained by Tes added to the controversy facing Ofsted about why the seemingly identical removal of students from school rolls was described as off-rolling in some inspection reports but not others.