Managing Complaints Checklist

Dealing with complaints - whether from parents, carers or community members - can be one of the most challenging aspects of school leadership. With vexatious complaints against schools and the number of instances of parents complaining on the rise, headteachers and SLT need ways of managing complaints and, crucially, preventing complaints from occurring when possible.

This checklist is designed to do exactly that and allows school leaders to review their processes in order to prevent complaints from parents but also to manage legitimate complaints carefully. It covers the following key areas:

• Complaint prevention
• What to do following the receipt of a school complaint
• Complaint investigation
• Complaint resolution
• Managing persistent, serial and vexatious complaints

Use the checklist to evaluate your current position when it comes to school concerns and complaints, such as how effectively you build and manage relationships with parents/carers and your use of communication to maintain a culture of mutual respect in school. This can help you to identify areas to develop to bolster your efforts in maintaining strong relationships and addressing concerns before they develop into a bigger issue, thus helping to prevent complaints from forming.

When complaints do occur, the checklist can support you to think about your processes in order to listen, investigate and respond to complaints in order to find a resolution for all parties. It also allows you to consider your complaints policy and whether the details in it support you, as a school leader, to deal with complaints, including complaints that are persistent, serial or vexatious.