Conference

2008 Safe Internet Use

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Highlights of previous SSBA conferences :-

2007 Developing a Parent Council and Encouraging Parental Involvement

2006 The Way Forward for Parental Involvement

2005 Parents in Partnership

2003 Partnerships and responsibilities

2002 SSBA is fit for the future

2001 Roadshow

2000 International
and published book
available here online

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Workshops
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Complaints in Education

1. The Scottish Consumer Council is Scotland's leading consumer organisation.

Our remit is to promote the consumer interest, and particularly to safeguard the interests of disadvantaged consumers.

We do this by carrying out careful research, to identify people's concerns and experiences, and by influencing policy makers to take consumers' views into account. Our work focuses mainly on public services, where people often have the least choice about how providers' decisions affect their quality of life.

We are partly funded by the government, and have a staff of specialist researchers. Our decision-making body is a council of 14 members who meet eight times a year.

2. The Scottish Consumer Council has been involved in education policy for over 20 years. Our main concern has always been to promote and safeguard the consumer interest.

But what is the consumer interest in education? Quite simply, consumers are people who make decisions about their own education or their children's education. Therefore, we are concerned with parents' and children's ability to make the decisions that best meet their needs.

3. In Scotland, as in many countries, parents are legally responsible for their children's education. Not schools or local authorities.

In order to fulfil their responsibilities, parents need to be able:

• to access the services their children need;

• to make the choices that best reflect their children's needs;

• to have access to reliable information;

• to put things right when they go wrong, and to be heard when decisions are being made that affect their children's education.

4. In Scotland there is a strong emphasis on parents working together in partnership with teachers and others.

Partnership is obviously beneficial to children's education, and ways of improving partnership between home and school are very important.

When things go wrong, however, partnership is put to the test. On one hand, partnership is not good at allowing people to express views that the other "partners" do not agree with. On the other hand, partnership characterised by genuine mutual respect can help people air their differences.

5. During the course of a child's school education, things are bound to go wrong from time to time.

When they do, it is crucial that the problem is resolved as quickly and fairly as possible, otherwise a child's education can suffer.

Things can go wrong, for example:

• In the day to day life of the school

• With decisions made by the local authority

• In the delivery of services, including those delivered by contractors on behalf of local authorities.

6. The Scottish Consumer Council has been looking at what happens when parents make a complaint about something that has gone wrong.

We already know a lot about how people complain in the public sector. In short, there are so many barriers to making a complaint, that most people never actually do. Barriers include:

• Not knowing your rights

• Not knowing who to complain to

• Being afraid of reprisals if you complain

• Thinking nothing will change anyway

Since we first investigated complaints handling in education, there have been many improvements. There has been a growing emphasis on making public services more responsive to consumers, and a drive towards implementing proper complaints procedures as part of this.

7. But what about the consumer experience?

• Our original research took place in 1994, with groups of parents and others. Some of our findings included:

• Parents were often afraid to admit they had had a complaint about their child's school or education.

• There was a wide range of problems experienced from time to time, sometimes very serious.

• Parents tended to meet with school staff to resolve problems, although parents from ethnic minorities were more likely to feel too daunted to approach the school

• Parents often did not know where to turn if the head teacher could not resolve the problem

• Parents often felt intimidated when speaking to teachers

• Parents were afraid of reprisals, such as making things worse for their children, if they made a complaint

But it wasn't all bad. There was a very clear message throughout our research that where schools made parents feel welcome more generally, it was much easier to resolve problems that happened

8. The lessons from our research included:

• There is strong evidence that people find it difficult to make a complaint about a public service, and this seems especially true in education

• When people experience problems, but do not make a complaint, then the problem is likely to continue. Worse, it is more likely to happen to other people. And it is children who suffer the most

• Having an open and easy to use complaints procedure can help people resolve problems

• Having strong home-school links helps parents and teachers resolve problems

9. Since then, we have discussed complaints issues with local authorities, with the government, and with a wide range of others with an interest in the topic. We have looked at complaints involving contractors who deliver services on behalf of local authorities.

While there have been many improvements, and a new emphasis on the importance of handling complaints properly, we still see areas of concern.

For example, our work on contractors showed weak links between complaints information and monitoring contracts: and the evidence from research still suggests making complaints in public services is difficult and far from satisfactory.

10. Questions to consider:

• Why take complaints seriously in education?

• Should schools feel threatened by complaints?

• Are parents being a nuisance if they complain?

• What happens if problems are not discussed?

• What makes it difficult for parents to complain?

• What makes complaints handling a better experience?

Jackie Welsh
Policy Manager
Scottish Consumer Council

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