Parents face "costly legal advice" as schools fail to implement complaints procedures

Few schools have implemented the statutory requirement for complaints procedures, the Children’s Commissioner for England has claimed.

In a report, Speaking up, published last month, Anne Longfield said schools were either not implementing the procedures or were failing to inform parents and pupils that they had one.

The watchdog said that, as a result, parents and pupils often struggled to make their voices heard and resorted to paying for costly legal advice.

The report also found that schools were not collecting data on complaints properly.

The Commissioner recommended that:

• "Schools should establish an open, positive culture where feedback and children’s views are valued;
• Details of how to complain should be included as part of the agreements many schools require parents to sign up to when their children start at a school;
• Information given to parents and carers should also cover the process for escalating complaints beyond the school;
• Schools and other statutory bodies should be required to collect of data on number and nature of complaints."
• The Department for Education should release annual aggregated statistics on school complaints.

Longfield said: “It is disappointing that there are cases of parents and children who want to complain about something that is affecting them in school, but can’t because there is not a formal procedure.

“Schools have a legal obligation to have a complaints system in place, but this report has found that in many cases they simply don’t have one – or where they do, parents and pupils find it’s not advertised, or is ineffectual.”

She added: “I understand that schools have heavy and important workloads and that this may seem like an extra, unnecessary level of bureaucracy, but it is extremely important they deal with complaints properly. If children have a legitimate complaint, they should feel like they will be taken seriously and responded to.

“Where complaints systems exist, we found that they are rarely planned with the needs of children or parents in mind – young people and their parents often don’t know where to start.”