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.

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