At a ‘stage 3’ level for complaint about teacher behaviour & culture at an academy and unsure about the make up of the panel

[PacificFish]

Hi all.
Any thoughts on this?
The panel should have at least one member who is ‘independent of the running and management of the school’ according to the govmnt website.
The panel consists of three trustees and the chair of the colleges local governing body.
They are trying to tell me that the trustees are independent of the college.
Is this correct? It seems to me that the point of the trustees and the chair of the governing body are to be part of the way the academy/college is run- to have an influence on it by being their critical friend. The point it that they are invested in the running of the place.
correct me if I’m wrong….

Bump

The trustees are governors of the school, but they may have delegated many of their duties to the local governing body. You should be able to find the governing body's standing orders on the school website.
I'm a local governor. Our independent person would normally be a senior leader from another school in the trust.
You could just ask them which is the independent member.

But if your complaint is about the actions of a specific teacher, I don't see how the "running of the school" is necessarily relevant, unless you're planning a generalised rant (which would be unwise). It's best to be very specific about what the problem with the teacher was and what you would like the school to do about it.

It was about two things- the first was the teacher, but also the way that our first complaint was handled. And that the culture of the organisation allowed the teacher to think their actions are ok.

We were specific about the actions of the teacher and we provided evidence for all our claims about this teacher and the other things that showed there is an attidue problem that allows teachers to behave like they did

My view is that a trustee cannot be described as independent of the running and management of the school. They are ultimately responsible for the management of the school, so I cannot see how the school can argue they are independent.

Thanks- that’s my thinking too, but obviously I’m not happy with them and I wondered if I was being a dick!

I'm a trustee. No, of course we're not independent. I hope we'd be scrupulously fair, but we would never approach a serious problem without bringing in an independent person.

Thank you - this is a serious allegation against the teacher and also we question the culture of the school given that what the teacher did was deemed to be ok.