The Department for Education has been called to tighten the process of withdrawing children from school

A total of 350 children have been withdrawn from schools with no record of where they went, leaving them at risk of female genital mutilation or radicalisation, the head of Ofsted has warned.

Sir Michael Wilshaw called yesterday for new rules requiring schools to collect more details of where pupils move to after they leave, saying that the present regulations fail to ensure children’s safety.

His demand came after Ofsted inspected a sample of 14 schools in Birmingham and east London and found that more than 1,000 pupils had left before the end of their schooling with little data of what happened to 350 of them. In some cases schools made curt notes to record that a child had left in the middle of the