The national body representing multi-academy trusts has called for the Department for Education to make urgent changes to support schools in coping with a rising wave of parental complaints.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), has said that the volume of complaints that its members are seeing is “not sustainable” and ”will have an impact on our ability to retain our leaders”.
The call comes after a major Tes investigation revealed that eight in 10 school leaders are seeing an increase in vexatious complaints, creating an “unmanageable” drain on resources.
In a briefing note sent to members today, CST calls for a range of policy changes, including a call for the DfE to create a system that ensures complaints about schools are “investigated once and not multiple times”.
CST said the DfE should create a single front door for itself and agencies to triage complaints and decide where each complaint goes.
This echoes concerns raised by James Bowen, assistant general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union. He warned that “one of the biggest problems” is that “the same complaints can be made to multiple agencies at the same time and schools can find themselves having to deal with the same complaint over and over again”.
CST said the DfE and its agencies ”should not investigate any complaints that have not been first properly investigated by the school or the trust”.
It is also seeking a change in policy that would mean the Teacher Regulation Agency can only receive referrals from an employer or the police. At the moment, complaints can be made to the agency by members of the public.
The Tes investigation also revealed that leaders feel the problem is being driven by a social media “frenzy”, overstretched public services and the large number of different routes through which parents can complain.
Complaints ‘putting pressure on leaders’
Writing to members today, Ms Cruddas warned: “The rise in parental complaints is putting significant pressure on school leaders.”
She added that this was “part of a wider global phenomenon of loss of public trust and confidence in public institutions” and not something that should be seen as being unique to schools in England.
Ms Cruddas said that she was not suggesting “in any way that parents do not have a right to complain”, and added that public services “learn all the time from complaints”.
“But the volume of complaints we are seeing is not sustainable in our schools and it will have an impact on our ability to retain our leaders,” Ms Cruddas said.
“This is an urgent issue and we need the DfE’s commitment to work with the sector on proportionate policy changes to mitigate the impact on our schools and our teachers and leaders.”
Echoing her message to leaders at the CST annual conference last year, Ms Cruddas said it is “important that schools and trusts very purposefully and deliberately help parents to feel connected to schools”.
She added that the sector must “recreate the conditions of the social contract which is explicit that parents and schools are co-educators of children so that there is mutual respect and mutual reinforcement of expectations and behaviours”.
The DfE has been contacted for comment.
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