What can the government do to reduce the 'tsunami' of trivial complaints schools and colleges receive?

Last year, schools and colleges had to deal with more than five million complaints from disgruntled parents and carers. Recent research conducted by Parentkind also found that 38% of parents had made a formal complaint and that head teachers deal, on average, with five complaints a week. 

The scale of the problem is overwhelming. We know, for example, that parents don't just complain to the school and wait for a response. Many fire off complaints to other organisations such as Ofsted and the Department for Education, and/or make misconduct referrals to the Teachers Regulation Agency. 

The tone of parental complaints has changed too. Our public law team have seen an increase in the numbers of parents who immediately dial up conflict by adopting a vicious, nasty and hectoring tone. Complaints can be very personal, often targeting specific members of staff and/ or children in the school. Some parents are rallying together to make whole class complaints and others are using AI to generate letters before action to threaten schools and colleges with legal action if they don't agree to do what they want. 

And, many parents are making repeated DSARs to find out what information the school or college holds about their child.

The government has recently acknowledged that the complaints system is “working for no-one” and the Secretary of State for Education has said she will overhaul it. That includes updating its guidance to schools and parents.

What does the existing guidance say?

The guidance for handling school complaints hasn't been updated since 2021. But it already sets out a robust framework for how  schools should handle complaints and provides a model complaints policy. 

It allows schools to reject repeat complaints and streamline how you deal with complaint campaigns which can generate large volumes of complaints based on the same subject or from people who are unconnected with the school. It also includes advice on managing serial and persistent complaints (although that relates to the nature of the complaint rather than the individual in question). 

However, we know that this approach is not working in all cases. There's been an increase in the numbers of schools and colleges taking legal action to prevent their staff from being abused and threatened by parents and other third parties. 

Separate guidance for parents states they should contact the school first as ‘most problems can be solved this way’. It then directs parents to follow the school's complaint process if the problem isn't resolved. It also explicitly tells parents that they can only complain to the DfE in three limited circumstances, and that it won't deal with complaints about the behaviour of school staff or where the parent wants the school to apologise or pay them compensation. 

It provides similar advice about complaints to Ofsted. It makes it clear that Ofsted can't resolve issues between parents and the school, change the outcome of a complaint or change the school's complaints process.

What might change?

According to the Times newspaper, the government is looking to ‘streamline the system, making it easier for parents to complain when something is wrong while ensuring schools are dealing only with the complaints they should be and have a clear process to address concerns’. It says (without attributing whether this is speculation or has come from a government source) that complaints could be sent to a central body.

We don't yet know what the new process might look like. However, our wish list would include:

• Providing clear, unambiguous guidance to parents about when and how to raise legitimate complaints; 
• Requiring parents to demonstrate that they have followed the school's complaints procedure before being allowed to escalate matters further - including to statutory bodies;
• Providing a fast track process to reject complaints where a parent has raised an issue which the relevant body can't resolve; 
• Encouraging the use of mediation between schools and parents to resolve matters quickly and amicably; 
• Giving schools and colleges more flexibility about they deal with trivial complaints or removing the requirement to allow them to appeal against these types of decisions; and   
• Changing their definition of vexatious so that includes the individual raising complaints rather than being limited to the subject matter of those complaints. If the government adopted this, schools and colleges will need clear guidance to understand at what point they can say to a parent who has made multiple complaints about different but minor issues - I'm sorry, but we aren't going to look at this complaint (or this part of your complaint) because we investigated the last 10 you made and this one raises similar concerns.

It won't be plain sailing whatever approach the government adopts. We are used to complaining about things we don't like or approve of in all aspects of our lives and that's unlikely to change. Plus, some of the issues parents complain about can't be easily resolved. Our public law team have seen an increase in the numbers of parents with SEN children who are not getting the support they need. 

Esther Salter, a Legal Director in our Public Law team has noticed a significantly increase in disability and discrimination tribunal appeals over the last year or so. She is of the view that the issues are clearly part of the wider SEND crisis, stemming from: a lack of funding and specialist school places, Local Authorities failing to deliver EHCP provision and refusing or delaying assessment of SEN children until crisis point is reached. Unfortunately, this often equates to the breakdown in relationship with the parent and school/ college. Early intervention and a streamlined complaints process will no doubt help, but wider systemic changes to the education sector are now vital to bring about meaningful change.

Our newsletters

We publish monthly employment and education newsletters. If you'd like to be added to the mailing list, please let me know.