Parent Complaints: Your Policy Is Your First Line Of Defence

Nobody wants to receive complaints, regardless of the sector that they work in, but for schools, managing challenging complaints comes with the added stress of continuing to work with the parents to ensure the wellbeing and education of their child, whilst experiencing in some cases particularly unpleasant behaviour.

We are well experienced in supporting schools to manage difficult and complex complaints. Whether the complaint is challenging because of the volume of correspondence received, the nature of the complaint itself, or because of the behaviour of the complainant, our first recommendation is to review your school’s complaints policy and procedures to ensure that it is robust and best protects your school.

Differentiate between parents and members of the public

Schools should have two complaints policies: one for parents and one for members of the public. There are certain requirements set out by the Department for Education which parent complaints policies must comply with, but when it comes to members of the public, your policy can be far more streamlined.

We have seen having this separate policy for members of the public become particularly useful where a former parent seeks to raise complaints with the school.

Set clear timescales

If your school does not impose a clear timescale for parents to raise complaints, or has an unnecessarily long timeframe, then your policy is not working in your school’s favour. We recommend that parents are given a timescale within which to raise a complaint, following which it will be out of time (with discretion for the school to extend this timescale in exceptional circumstances, such as in the cases of the parent experiencing health complications).

Policies should also include timescales for parents to progress through to each stage of the policy. If parents fail to comply with these timescales, schools can deem the complaint out of time.

Clarify the scope of your complaints policy

We recommend that school complaints policies clearly set out the types of complaint which won’t be dealt with under the complaints policy. For example, complaints about admissions should be managed under separate statutory procedures. Be careful, however, to pay proper attention to the actual crux of the complaint. For example, whilst complaints about the content of the National Curriculum should be directed to the Department for Education, complaints about a school's delivery of the curriculum are within the scope of the complaints policy.

Managing serial, persistent and unreasonable complaints

We are increasingly being contacted by schools who are experiencing parents acting unreasonably when pursuing a complaint. Complaints of this nature can very quickly become overbearing, taking up valuable staff time and ultimately impacting on the wellbeing of staff.

Where a parent does not accept the outcome of their complaint, even once they have exhausted the school’s complaints policy, they often place pressure on the school to re-visit their complaint or attempt to re-phrase their complaint slightly differently.

In these cases, if the school has confirmed that its complaints procedure has been completed and that the matter is closed, subsequent contact from the parent  to raise the same issue can be viewed as 'serial' or 'persistent’.

It is, however, key that the school does not mark a complaint as 'serial' before the parent has completed all stages of the procedure and does not refuse to accept further correspondence from the parent more generally - a 'serial or persistent' marking should be against the complaint itself, rather than the parent.

Schools may receive complaints which are vexatious. These are complaints which are, for example:

-      obsessive, persistent, harassing, prolific, repetitious

-      made with an insistence upon pursuing unmeritorious complaints and/or unrealistic outcomes beyond all reason

-      made with an insistence upon pursuing meritorious complaints in an unreasonable manner

-      designed to cause disruption or annoyance

Communication plans with parents

School complaints policies should include a procedure for managing serial and unreasonable complaints. If the parent’s behaviour is causing a significant level of disruption, regardless of whether or not they have raised a complaint, the school can implement a tailored communication plan.

Communications plans are a strategy which we have seen success with when implemented to manage unreasonable behaviour. This could include, for example, restricting the parent to a single point of contact at the school via an email address. This is particularly helpful where the parent contacts multiple members of staff at the school, creating a burden to staff time and wellbeing.

What should your school do to manage parent complaints?

Whilst schools cannot eliminate parent complaints, and parents must be allowed to complain where they are dissatisfied with a school, there are steps which can be taken to protect the school and make managing complaints more time-efficient.

We can support your school to:

-          review your complaints policies and procedures to ensure that they comply with the Department for Education’s guidance and protects your school

-          put in place a parent code of conduct to ensure that parents have a clear understanding of the behaviour expected of them, and what will be considered to be unacceptable

-          ensure that your response to a complaint complies with requirements set out in the guidance and has the best chance of bringing the complaint to a close

-          put in place communication plans where appropriate

We are also seeing parents combining pursuing complaints with making subject access requests to cause difficulty and administrative burden for the school. We can support your school to manage subject access requests, advising on how to limit the request, reviewing and redacting data, and preparing the response, to ease the school’s burden.

Parents are also increasingly using social media as a tool to leverage schools. If a parent does publish information on social media, we can provide you with support.