Complaints Statement
- The school aims to be a caring, positive and supportive place where young people can learn and receive education in an appropriate manner.
- We want to listen to parents’ views about their children’s education and well-being at school.
- We will try to resolve parents’ concerns and complaints as informally and quickly as possible.
- We will take any complaints seriously and provide a thorough and appropriate response.
- No student will be penalised or intimidated as a result of his/her parent making a complaint.
- We aim to learn from any mistakes or weaknesses, in order to improve further the standards of education offered at the school.
- The school will ensure that all complaints are logged.
- The governing body as a whole will not discuss individual complaints, and any governor receiving such a complaint will direct the parent to the school’s complaints information for parents and procedures.
- The governing body will monitor and review the effectiveness of the policy and procedures annually by receiving a summary report of numbers and types of formal complaints together with outcomes. Individual details will not be included.
- Complaints or appeals relating to admissions, exclusions or Special Educational Needs provision will normally be handled by separate statutory mechanisms, and we will ensure that parents are informed of how such complaints can be pursued.
School Complaints Procedure – COMPLAINTS POLICY 12/2022
Should this full procedure fail to lead to a resolution of the issues in the parent’s view, he/she can write to the Secretary of State for Education at the DfES. The only situation where the DfES is likely to become involved, however, is where the governing body is judged to have acted unreasonably or has failed to fulfil its statutory responsibilities. Internal school matters are not in the Secretary of State’s remit.
The Local Authority has no statutory power to intervene in such issues beyond giving advice or making recommendations. There is no right of appeal to the Director of Education or to Members of the Council. A final recourse for a parent might be to apply to the High Court for judicial review.