Parent Guide to School complaints
The Department for Education, working with Ofsted and ParentKind, has recently published the Parent Guide to School Complaints.
The document includes checklists to resolve concerns with focus on collaboration, and explicitly asks parents/carers to be "clear and respectful" when communicating with their child’s school.
The guide also urges parents/carers to “only use AI with caution” when drafting formal complaints, noting that AI can sometimes produce inaccurate results when citing laws, often referring to out of date guidance, or even US laws, which then hinders resolutions.
Our experience is that AI complaints lose the essence of the parents’ real concerns for their child, can cause the focus of the complaint to change, are overly wordy and do not support parents and school working together to resolve.
If you feel you need to raise a complaint with the school, it is strongly recommended that a conversation with one of our Senior Leaders takes place first, to clearly understand the essence of your concerns and any specific resolution you are seeking.
You may also wish to refer to our Complaints Policy.