Complaint to Board of governors

[MrsSoyaSauce]

Hi there, has anyone complained to the BOD about bullying after their DC has left the school? We decided to remove our child with immediate effect as Headteacher seemed incapable of his job and kept referring to the bullying as "friendship issues" even tho there was evidence of physical bullying.

Hello. Yes. Ensure it is a Governor who is neither friends or has any personal interest (conflict of interest) in siding with the Headmaster. It makes the process much fairer. We dealt with a bunch of Governors who all socialized together and it made things really hard on us as they were biased.

You can't really go wrong ultimately if you have evidence and it is stated in their bullying policy. My advice is be very matter of fact, don't let them deflect (appears a common tactic) and want a resolution. Have everything noted.

If the Governors aren't helpful than try Local Authority but in our experience they also were quite biased. So, you will need to have water tight evidence.

We actually ended up having to go the whole way and had a Panel Hearing. We didn't want to as it felt so ridiculous when it could have been sorted earlier but we did win it. It felt the right thing to do because the School is meant to be looking after kids not protecting their own careers!

Good luck.

I'm a governor.

The first thing is to get the school's complaints policy and follow it, it should be on the website. They vary a bit depending on various things, e.g. if it's in an academy chain which might have various management and governance layers.

If it gets to the panel stage, as overitall says, they should be unbiased and you can ask for their process for how the panel is put together. Best practice is to make it rotational.

Many boards are overwhelmed with complaints unfortunately and this can contribute to an extremely frustrating experience for parents. A further frustration you might face is that your child has left so the impetus for them to deal with it is reduced. That said, many boards handle complaints very thoroughly. Good luck!

Think about what you want out of the process and be clear about it in your complaint - an acknowledgement that things weren’t handled properly? an apology? For them to change policies?

You don’t get to choose the Governor. As others have said, you need to follow the procedures in the complaints policy and you have to be clear about what you want the outcome to be.

You are able to ask for a Governor who doesn’t have a conflict of interests.

Yes - there certainly shouldn’t be any conflicts of interest. That would be inappropriate.