Handling Complaints

Today Femi and Matt discuss their approaches to handling complaints.  None of this is specific to maths and so the conversation should be relevent for colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds.  

The pair talk about 
- Receiving complaints well
- Prioritising responding to parents and acting promptly
- The importance for people of simply being heard
- The pros and cons of different approaches to investigating complaints about a colleague.  
- Avoiding big surprises by knowing what is going on in your department - by walking the shop floor
- Relationships with parents and reputation in the community,  
- Some common ways in which schools frustrate parents.  
- The balance of representing colleagues and representing children, taking an approach which seeks truth rather than rebuking the complaint – being neutral and not making any assumptions.  
- Recognising a view point vs condoning it.  
- Whether things change when parents are paying a lot of money for their child’s education – i.e. in private school.  
- Reframing the complaint or query and looking at it from the parent’s perspective. 
- Setting out your protocol with the team
- Using your line manager for guidance vs gossiping.  
- Chain of command.  
- Accepting fault when appropriate and being proactive to make first contact when we’ve clearly got it wrong.