School Complaints Procedure

St. Francis Catholic School Complaints Policy -April 2022

You may also find this leaflet useful in deciding how to proceed with a complaint. St Francis Complaint Leaflet - April 2022

As a school welcome the support from parents and carers and take any complaint seriously.

A complaint can be brought by a parent of a registered child at the school or any person who has been provided with a service or a facility at the school. As such, Governing Bodies of schools are required by law to have a complaints procedure in place to deal with complaints relating to aspects of the school or the provision of facilities or certain services at the school. There is also a requirement for this procedure to be publicised.

Raising your complaint
If you have a concern or complaint regarding the services a school provides, this should be raised with a member of school staff either in person, by telephone or in writing. You will be given an opportunity to discuss your concerns informally with the appropriate member of staff.

If, however, you wish to make a complaint about a particular teacher or another member of staff, you should initially make your complaint to the Headteacher of the school concerned. You may need to make an appointment to discuss these concerns further. If the complaint is about the headteacher, you should make your compliant to the Chair of governors.

Informal complaints
Where possible, complaints should be resolved informally. In this instance we recommend that a meeting is arranged to discuss your concerns. At this stage:

• You may wish to bring a friend to any discussion;
• The member of staff dealing with the concern should make sure that you are clear as to what action (if any) or monitoring of the situation has been agreed;
• The process should be completed speedily and concluded in writing with appropriate detail;
• Where no satisfactory solution has been found, you can consider making a formal complaint in writing to the Headteacher which will take matters to stage 1 on the complaints procedure.

Please note, it is for the school and governing body to respond to complaints about services provided by a school through the school complaints’ procedure as above. Essex Education Authority has no formal responsibility for resolving complaints regarding the services provided by a school. However, there is more information on their website which can be found  here.

Safeguarding
Any complaint brought to the attention of the Headteacher that suggests that a child has been at risk of significant harm through violence, emotional abuse, sexual interference or neglect may be referred without further notice to Essex Social Services and/or to the social services authority for the area in which the child lives. If a social services authority decides to investigate a situation this may postpone or supersede investigation by the headteacher or governing body.