Additional guidance on managing complaints

Bryan Slater

Director of Education

Distribution

To all Headteachers

The attached document is provided for your information:

INFORMATION	Title	Additional guidance in relation to managing formal complaints.
	Summary of contents	Guidance below on: The relationship between a schools’ formal complaints procedures and other formal procedures. The way in which the LEA will support schools in dealing with specific complaints. A brief questionnaire on the take up of the complaints procedure.
	Associated documents	The school’s complaints procedure
	Date	16 November 2001
	Effective from	Immediately
	LEA Contact	Alan Smith	(	01603 224455
	E-mail address	alan.smith.edu@norfolk.gov.uk
	Norfolk Self Review reference	6. How well does the school work in partnership with parents? 7. How well is the school led and managed?
	Document reference	MI 218/01

This Management Information sheet may be found on ESINET at the following address:

http://www.esinet.norfolk.gov.uk/cadmin/misheet/default.asp

Additional guidance on managing formal complaints

The revised guidance on managing complaints has been well received by many schools. The booklets were accompanied with a paper giving schools advice on how to manage complaints. If you require copies of either document please go to ESINET at http://www.esinet.norfolk.gov.uk/complaintsweb/. We would value information on the use and take up of the revised guidance so a brief questionnaire is provided at the end of this document. Please complete it to help us get it right.

Recent developments, cases and issues raised by teachers’ professional associations have indicated that further guidance in two areas on the management of complaints would be helpful. The two areas are:

the relationship between the complaints procedure and other formal procedures available to schools.
the way in which the LEA will support schools in dealing with specific complaints.

It would be helpful if you would share this document with your chair of governors.

1. The relationship between the complaints procedure and other formal procedures available to schools

When you receive a formal complaint, you will need to decide the most appropriate formal investigative procedure to use. For example, should you use the complaints procedure, disciplinary procedure, child protection procedure or is it a matter for the police or the County Auditor? The guidance associated with each of the procedures should help you, if not, please seek further support from my colleagues named at the end of this section.

The decision you make at this stage is very important. A matter initially pursued as a formal complaint that is subsequently recognised by governors as say, a disciplinary issue, would have to stop at the point of recognition. Three consequences would then follow:

The disciplinary procedures would have to be started from the beginning using new governors not associated with the matter;
The governors might wish to question the headteacher’s initial judgement;
The complainant would have to be advised and kept informed of developments (see below for further detail).

If the initial decision is to use the complaints procedure and you or your Chair of Governors subsequently decide that an alternate procedure is more appropriate, there are three matters you should keep in mind:

The complaints procedure must stop. It has no further part to play. In effect other procedures have primacy over the complaints procedure.
Although, if a mistake has been made, it is possible to move from the complaints procedure to another formal procedure, the opposite is not true. You cannot move to the complaints procedure from another formal procedure. The formal procedure must be completed.
The complaints procedure is fairly public; the complainant is involved at all stages. In other formal procedures this is not the case. If not kept informed, the complainant could easily become aggrieved and then start looking for alternate routes to complain. Although other procedures are confidential in nature you should tell the complainant about the procedure, the rigour involved, likely timescales, potential outcomes and the complainant’s position at the end of the process.

In most procedures the complainant has no right of appeal. Obviously, the complainant cannot and must not be informed of the detail of the case beyond that which they already know, nevertheless they must be kept informed on progress and the final outcome.

From the outset the complainant’s expectation of possible outcomes must be realistic and technically possible. Establishing this is critical as it may sway the complainant’s view and/or curtail subsequent actions.

Formal procedures will resolve the substantive point, but it may leave other related points unresolved. Parents may seek to use the complaints procedure to deal with the related points. This cannot happen as the complaints procedure is likely to require the whole matter to be reinvestigated. A more appropriate way forward is for the governors to ensure that when they receive the outcome from a formal procedure they consider it and the implications of all other related issues.

Key points

Other procedures have primacy over the complaints procedure;
The complaints procedure cannot be used by a complainant as a back door mechanism to re-open a matter already dealt with through another procedure;
Keep the complainant informed and their expectations realistic;
If in doubt seek advice before embarking on any procedure.

Case history: A parent told a headteacher that she wanted to make a formal complaint under the school’s complaints procedure because her child was hit by a teacher. The school correctly dealt with the issue under the disciplinary procedure, not the complaints procedure. This was explained to the parent and what the disciplinary procedure entails. The outcome of the investigation was reported to the parent: the headteacher found that the child was not hit.

The parent was not satisfied as she was sure her child had been hit and so complained to the Chair of Governors that the headteacher did not carry out the disciplinary procedure properly. The parent’s objective in doing this was to have her accusation that her child was hit re-opened by the governors and to be more involved in the proceedings. Under the terms of the disciplinary procedure, this cannot happen; the case cannot be re-opened. Although the parent had the right to use the complaints procedure in this way, when it was explained to the parent that this was now about the headteacher’s conduct, she withdrew the complaint.

This case came to a successful resolution because (a) the school adopted the correct procedure and advised the parent of the correct procedures from the outset (b) the parent was advised of the possible outcomes and (b) the parent was kept informed of what was happening.

Fortunately the circumstances covered by this guidance are rare; nevertheless, as the case history shows, they do happen. This additional guidance is to help ensure a difficult problem does no become even more difficult.

Additional support is available from:

The complaints procedure: Alan Smith ((01603) 224455

The disciplinary procedure: your named Personnel Consultant

Personnel matters: your named Personnel Consultant

The child protection procedure: Grace Cheese ((01603) 223473

Audit matters: Paul Fisher ((01603) 223464

Al of this information is available on ESINET and is updated as staff responsibilities change.

2. The way in which the LEA will support schools in dealing with specific complaints.

The LEA recognises it is right and proper for schools to resolve complaints about their school. The LEA will therefore endeavour to ensure that such complaints are directed to the school concerned.

All schools are required to have their own complaints procedure. As a matter of course, all complaints received by the LEA about a school will be passed on to the school without further intervention by the LEA. The normal pattern will be to pass on complaints about the headteacher to the Chair of Governors. Every endeavour will be made to advise the headteacher of this eventuality. All other complaints will be passed to the headteacher. The complainant will be told of this action by the LEA; asked to deal with the school directly and will be sent a copy of the standard complaints procedure booklet.

Although the above spells out the LEA’s standard practice there may be exceptions to this approach. There may be instances for example in school holidays where the inevitable delay would serve to aggravate the complaint. It may be the judgement of the LEA Officer that the nature or the manner of the complaint is such that to pass it on to the school would be detrimental to the school. There may be situations where the complainant refuses to deal with the school due to the nature of the complaint e.g. confidence issues in the governing body. In all cases a complaint will be accepted as an exception only on the judgement of a senior officer, and then only as a last resort.

If a complaint is accepted by the LEA as an exception, at the time of the complaint the senior officer will take the minimum action necessary to satisfy the complainant. The officer will then tell the school (or Chair of Governors as is appropriate) about the issue and agree to further action with the school. It is expected that the school will endeavour to take responsibility for the complaint as soon as is practicable.

In extreme cases, the officer and the school may agree that the complaint or the nature of the complainant is such that the school does not feel competent to handle the matter. In such cases the LEA will take further responsibility to manage the complaint. Such action will be agreed between the school and officer before any further action is taken. The main purpose of the action will be to resolve the complaint with all appropriate speed. By its nature, such action will not be able to follow the school’s own complaints procedure and therefore any agreed action will also have to have the agreement of the complainant. It is assumed that in these extreme circumstances the outcome of the LEA action would be subject to scrutiny by the Ombudsman as required.

No action will be taken by the LEA that may conflict with other procedures and agreements e.g. disciplinary procedures, child protection procedures.

PLEASE HELP US TO GET IT RIGHT

The New Complaints Procedure for Schools

You should have received a copy of the new Complaints Procedure and associated guidance. These are all available on ESINET:Schools

The revised guidance stems entirely from feedback. Your feedback is therefore critical. Now that you have had the chance to look at the revisions please let us know what you think.

	Please tick
	Yes	No
Do you feel that the new procedures will be more helpful to? you and your school parents others



Did you find the additional guidance notes on managing complaints helpful?
Have your governors adopted, or will they adopt, the revised procedure for your school unamended?
Have you ever had to deal with a formal complaint in school?
Have you used the revised procedure to deal with a formal complaint in your school?
Is there any area missing that you feel we should have been included in the new guidance? (please specify)
Please add any other comments you feel may be helpful.

Nearly there, continued overleaf/

Do you have comments about the Education Department’s own complaints procedure?
The phase of your school
If you would like us to respond to any of the points you have made, please give your school name -

Many thanks for completing this questionnaire. The information you have provided will be used. Please return the form to:

Alan Smith

Education Dept.

County Hall

Martineau Lane

Norwich

NR1 2DL