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Making a complaint about a school

How a complaint moves through a school’s stages, what to put in writing, and where it goes if the school’s own process does not resolve it.

Timing

Estimated deadline

Schools set their own complaint timescales in their procedure. Separately, a disability discrimination claim about a school is made to the First-tier Tribunal (SEND) and must be sent within six months of the act you are complaining about, though the Tribunal can extend that.

What this page covers

Complaints follow the school’s published procedure. Knowing the stages in advance means fewer months lost in the wrong place.

Evidence to gather

  • The school’s published complaints procedureIt sets the stages and timescales your complaint is judged against.
  • Your written complaint and the repliesIt shows what was raised at each stage and what was answered.
  • A dated record of eventsWhat happened and when, kept separately from how it was handled.

The steps

  1. 1

    Raise it with the teacher or SENCO first

    Most published procedures expect an informal stage first, and skipping it usually sends the complaint back to the start.

  2. 2

    Get the school’s complaints procedure

    Every school must have one. Most publish it online, and academies must provide theirs on request. It sets out the stages, who hears each one, and how long each stage should take.

  3. 3

    Put the complaint in writing

    What happened, with dates; what you have already tried; and what you are asking the school to do. Keep it to those three things.

  4. 4

    Escalate to the governing board or trust

    This is normally the last stage inside the school and is usually heard by a panel. The exact stages are the ones in your school’s procedure, not a national sequence.

  5. 5

    Take it further if it is still unresolved

    Once the school’s own process is finished, the next step for both maintained schools and academies is the Department for Education, which looks at whether the complaint was handled properly rather than deciding the issue again. Ofsted is a separate route for concerns about a school as a whole.

Where this comes from4 sources

  • SEND code of practice: 0 to 25 years

    Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care

    Last checked

  • Equality Act 2010

    UK Parliament

    Last checked

  • Complain about a school

    Department for Education (GOV.UK)

    Last checked

  • First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability)

    HM Courts & Tribunals Service

    Last checked

Work out where you stand

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