Parental complaints – the art of the possible

Time:  9.30am – 12 noon

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Virtual course

Fees
Member – £99
Non-Member – £149

Facilitator – Guy Dudley, NAHT

This course will provide you with the tools and tips to manage parental complaints as effectively as you can and will cover the following:

• The scope of your complaints procedure
• Roles and responsibilities
• The ‘complaint’
• Campaigns and persistent complainants
• Persistent correspondents
• Unreasonable complaints
• Anonymous complaints
• Complaints received outside term-time
• Recording of meetings
• When to stop responding
• Complainants and social media
• Dealing with abusive visitors
• Prevention strategies
• Building effective home-school partnerships 

Audience

Head teachers, Deputy head teachers, Assistant head teachers, SBLs and Middle Leaders and others in any capacity and / or with responsibility for working with parents and carers.

Aims

• By the end of the session, you will be:
• Prepared to adjust your complaints procedure
• Clearer about your role
• More able to qualify the complaint
• Better equipped to handle ‘difficult’ complaints and complainants
• Clear about procedural diversions
• More confident to take action 

Objectives

You will have the confidence to do the following:

• Change your complaints procedure
• Train relevant staff in the new procedure
• Publicise your new procedure on the school’s website and let parents know
• Integrate the building of home-school partnerships into your school’s strategy and plans [INSET days, school improvement plans, Ofsted-ready preparations] 

Facilitator

Guy Dudley MCIPD, FSSP

Guy has worked for the NAHT since 2013, he was previously NAHT Head of Specialist Advice but is now Senior Editor, Pathway, NAHT-Discovery Education.  Providing information, advice, guidance and support to school leaders on all topics related to running their schools, Guy’s specialist areas are human resources, employment law, leadership and governance, working with stakeholder groups and school support functions.  Previously, Guy had a variety of senior HR-related posts held at the Department for Education, international charities, an energy provider and a hospice.