Handling Complaints

Beyond Good

Today Femi and Matt discuss their approaches to handling complaints. None of this is specific to maths and so the conversation should be relevent for colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds.

The pair talk about
- Receiving complaints well
- Prioritising responding to parents and acting promptly
- The importance for people of simply being heard
- The pros and cons of different approaches to investigating complaints about a colleague.
- Avoiding big surprises by knowing what is going on in your department - by walking the shop floor
- Relationships with parents and reputation in the community,
- Some common ways in which schools frustrate parents.
- The balance of representing colleagues and representing children, taking an approach which seeks truth rather than rebuking the complaint – being neutral and not making any assumptions.
- Recognising a view point vs condoning it.
- Whether things change when parents are paying a lot of money for their child’s education – i.e. in private school.
- Reframing the complaint or query and looking at it from the parent’s perspective.
- Setting out your protocol with the team
- Using your line manager for guidance vs gossiping.
- Chain of command.
- Accepting fault when appropriate and being proactive to make first contact when we’ve clearly got it wrong.