Dame Rachel De Souza

speaker

518 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 12 May

Dame Rachel De Souza’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth · More Rosebud - Dame Rachel De Souza, the Children's Commissioner · 12 May 2026 podcast

I think it's significantly different after lockdown.

So I really, really... That's why I did... That's why I took this job.

I remember sitting in Yarmouth, my school in Yarmouth, seeing this job come up and thinking, I'm going to go do that because...

Part of the problem is about what happened with workforce.

Part of it is children's attendance.

Part of it is mental health.

We can characterise it however we want, but it's like a long tail of COVID.

And we should have gone harder and focused on the children straight after lockdown.

We shouldn't have closed schools.

I mean, I would never close schools again.

I think that was the first time we closed schools since the evacuation.

And we had no idea how bad the results were going to be.

We still have a backlog of problems.

But I do think with the right focus and energy and particularly in public service, we could move it.

We did it before.

I mean, we did it before with, you know, when I was a teacher in the 90s, everyone would have said what you'd said, how bad the state system is, how difficult it is.

And that kind of foot on the gas of Blair and Gove and, you know, and the way we just expected so much more and praised headteachers and pushed them and worked really well.

It didn't work well for all.

We need to do it for all.

But I think there are solutions and we do know what to do and we should be doing it.

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