Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza Visits Outwood Grange Academy to Champion Student Voice
Outwood Grange Academy welcomed Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, alongside Pete Whitehead, Education Policy Lead, for a visit centred on empowering student voice.
During the visit, Dame Rachel engaged with students in an interactive session featuring content she helped create for VotesforSchools. This educational platform provides weekly voting resources designed to prompt discussion on topical issues, help young people develop informed opinions and share their voices with key decision-makers. The session was followed by a discussion around key issues affecting young people today, with Dame Rachel, Pete Whitehead, students, and the school's Personal Development lead, Julekha Motara.
Outwood Grange Academy has been at the forefront of embedding pupil democracy, having integrated the VotesforSchools initiative into its curriculum for the past eight years. The visit serves as a national recognition of the academy’s long-standing dedication to creating an environment where young people can articulate their perspectives on major societal topics.
The visit highlighted the mutual commitment of both the Children’s Commissioner and Outwood Grange Academy to ensuring that children’s views are heard by policymakers and integrated into national discussions on education and youth welfare.
Julekha Motara, at Outwood Grange Academy, commented:
“It is a real privilege to have Dame Rachel de Souza visit the academy and engage directly with our students. Her visit is significant recognition of the sustained work we do at Outwood Grange Academy to give our students a platform to develop their voice, express their views, and engage with important issues. Empowering young people is something Dame Rachel is deeply passionate about, so we share a strong common purpose.
“We recently increased the time dedicated to Personal Development within our timetable, making high-quality PD provision a clear priority for our students, after they told us it's something they wanted. Having championed VotesforSchools here for around eight years, I am a firm advocate for the impact it has when embedded alongside our expanded PD curriculum. It provides an essential platform for informed debate, and it is a resource every school should have access to.”
A spokesperson for VotesforSchools added:
“We are so delighted that The Children's Commissioner was able to visit one of our most committed schools and see VotesforSchools in action. We hope Dame Rachel came away with a clear insight into the empathy, critical thinking and open-mindedness that VotesforSchools and Outwood Grange Academy seek to instil in young people. She may even have met a future Children's Commissioner!”
