To ask if you’ve ever complained to your child’s school?

[Lolabirdy]

If you’ve ever complained to your child’s primary school, can you tell me what it was about and how it was handled etc?

I’m starting my school-based teacher training in September and just interested for my own development. I would like to have positive, effective relationships with all my class’s parents so just interested in hearing the biggest/most common parental concerns beforehand.

I can’t see how these two things correlate. If you want to be a good teacher, surely you don’t need the full details of complaints and how they are handled in order to do it?

I save my complaints for egregious problems. Issues where my child was repeatedly having her asthma triggered. I had some very stern conversations with her PE teacher. The time a teacher blatantly discriminated against her because of her autism. Dd was removed from that teacher’s courses that day and will never be scheduled with her again. I didn’t even have to ask, once I told the school what happened they folded immediately and were just hoping I didn’t escalate the issue.

in terms of what you can actually do. Don’t assume parents know how things work. We don’t know the acronyms. We don’t know that the school does X every April. If we are first time parents it is all new to us. What is routine for you, is new for us. Getting a message saying that the MDR is closed for 2 days or that because of bad weather we are using pickup method B means nothing to the parent of a reception aged child.

People on MN usually complain that teachers have favourites or don’t like their child; that they shout or ask the children to bring things in at the last minute. You can’t predict what people will complain about. You need to remember that some families will never read with their children no matter how many times you send a book home; some people do not have pens, pencils, paper or colouring pencils at home and some people do not have access to the internet at home except on an adults phone.DS said one child in his yr5 class didn’t have any Lego at home. You will get complaints from parents who think there is too much homework and those who think there is too little.

As an experienced education professional…

Remember
~Build good positive relationships

~Listen. Sometimes a complaint isn't really about the incident. The parent that shouted at me because I hadn't tied her child’s lace, wasn't really annoyed about the lace, given that with time, she sought help for more serious things.

~Seek advice from experienced colleagues

~Don't be afraid to check things out even it it means asking a parent to wait for an answer. Say ‘ sorry, I don't know the answer, but I can find out ( and make sure you do find out and go back to them).

~You can't please everybody all, of the time. Sometimes you have to make a professional decision that you stand by ( because you do know best).

~School policies ( including the Compliments, Concerns and Complaints Policy) are in place because they have been well thought out, meet legislation and create fairness. Familiarise yourself with them and always abide by what they have in place.

I know it isn’t really what you asked, but the best thing you can do is make sure you are following school policies and then you are slightly protected from the fall out of any complaints. In my experience (10+ years teaching so far, SLT), the vast majority of complaints are linked to parents being unaware of school policies, poor communication or misunderstandings BUT often these will be things out of your control, eg
“Why have you only told us the date of the nativity play? It’s too late for me to get the time off work.”
”I don’t agree with Year X having homework/why isn’t there more homework?”
”My child told me that Child X hit her and nobody did anything about it” (they did, but for obvious reasons this may have been under the other children’s radar).

You can often pre-empt things with a quick chat at the end of the day (“there was a slight incident in the playground, and I just wanted to reassure you that we are aware of it and were dealing with it internally”), or by acknowledging concerns/complaints. “I appreciate that you feel it is late notice for the Christmas play dates, I’ll pass that on and we’ll see what we can do next time.”

The worst thing to do is go rogue - if your homework isn’t in line with school policy, the parents should be complaining. If you secretly agree with the dates being sent out late, don’t try and get the parents on side by agreeing with them and blaming it all on the office.

Also, remember that everyone has a bad day and sometimes you’re just the friendly face in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rise above it, stay calm, move on. Ask SLT if you need support.

I suggest you spend a little bit of time on school governance. Look at the complaints policy and how that works. You could volunteer as a Governor in a school to get a feel for it.
People complain about things that do not meet their expectations. People's expectations differ wildly.