Contribution
My Lords, this group focuses on the thorny issue of complaints. The amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough would introduce a new right of appeal for parents who have made a complaint that has not been upheld to a maintained school, academy or non- maintained special school.
At the risk of stating the obvious, most schools follow the law; they follow guidance and non-statutory guidance. I remember one teacher saying to me, “We live our lives by the bell. Of course we follow the rules”, but I accept the examples that my noble friend cited. We know that the volume of complaints is rising considerably, sadly assisted by tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models. As my noble friend Lady Spielman said on her amendment, to which I was pleased to add my name, a complaint can be made to the Department for Education, Ofsted and the TRA, as well as to the school itself. Most worryingly, the school is sometimes excluded and complaints are made to all the other agencies but not to the school.
I am grateful to the charity Parentkind for its research into complaints, which shows that the vast majority of parents are happy with their child’s school, but also that 38% of the 2,000 parents in the sample interviewed had filed a formal complaint in the last year. Head teachers report separately from the Parentkind research that, on average, they are dealing with five complaints a week.
As my noble friend Lord Jackson explained, his amendment would support parents who are not satisfied with the school’s response to a complaint and provide a different mechanism to enforce their legal duties. I find it troubling that this amendment is needed, particularly the second element, as there are significant safeguards to ensure that schools meet their legal duties. I would have hoped that the existing system, which allows a complaint to be referred to a panel chaired by an independent member, would be sufficient. However, I think the Committee will agree that my noble friend has raised some extremely worrying examples including—and this might be insulting to snails—about the pace of the response received from the department.
I turn to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Spielman. As she set out, it aims to simplify and streamline the complaints process. We are trying to address the current problems in the system whereby parents can make complaints to multiple places, which leads to confusion, frustration on the part of parents, delays and extra work and stress for school leaders. I know that is something that the Secretary of State is very alive to and has promised to come back with ideas on in the schools White Paper, which is coming very soon, I think—but perhaps I put the “very” in.
Our amendment would ensure that complaints are dealt with by only one party at a time, and that it is the most appropriate one. The Minister will be aware of cases where tremendous pressure is placed on the leadership of schools, including on some occasions when false and vindictive allegations are made. I remember visiting a school where a parent had alleged that over half of the members of staff had behaved inappropriately towards their child. Each complaint was made to multiple organisations and had to be dealt with individually, which took a huge toll on school leaders and their colleagues. Indeed, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, has said:
“We are hearing more often from school leaders who have seen a significant increase in complaints, including a big rise in those that are clearly vexatious or baseless. This can harm their wellbeing, and cause unnecessary stress and workload”.
He also agrees that:
“Too often complaints are escalated unnecessarily, including sometimes to multiple agencies at the same time”.
I hope that I am safe in saying that I do not think that either my noble friend or I are wedded to the particular approach that we have in our amendment, but we are wedded to supporting schools and parents so that complaints can be dealt with swiftly and clearly, with a minimum of stress and expense, human or financial, to all involved. I look forward to hearing from the Minister the Government’s plans in this area.