Latest / HFL Education / The HFL Education Business Services Podcast - How can school leaders manage complaints in the age of AI?

Transcript

The HFL Education Business Services Podcast - How can school leaders manage complaints in the age of AI? · HFL Education

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome to the HFL Education Business Services podcast.
• 0:06
  I'm Catherine Loake, the director of business services here at HFL Education.
• 0:09
  We wanted to bring you these podcasts because we recognise that the role of school leadership’s growing ever wider and ever deeper, and finding the time to unpack some of those key issues away from the classroom is getting really challenging.
• 0:19
  So that's where we come in.
• 0:20
  And today, I'm delighted to be joined by Emma Murray, who is the head teacher of Camps Hill Primary School in Stevenage.
• 0:26
  Hello, Emma. Hello.
• 0:27
  Do you want to tell us a little bit about your school before we go on to talk about AI and complaints? Absolutely.
• 0:33
  So I'm a CEO of a trust.
• 0:36
  So we have two schools in our trust.
• 0:37
  They're both based in Stevenage.
• 0:39
  They're quite large primary schools.
• 0:40
  And we have a real mix of children from different backgrounds, different countries, different languages.
• 0:46
  And approximately, we're, both those schools are around about 33 or 34% SEND need as well.
• 0:54
  So we've got the kind of dual advantage of having a co-CEO with us who will have the trust perspective and obviously that kind of headteacher perspective as well.
• 1:02
  So yeah, really excited Emma, to get into AI and complaints culture.
• 1:07
  So I wanted to start with a really scary statistic, which is that a Parentkind study last year showed that were 5 million complaints made to schools last year alone, 5 million.
• 1:19
  And a Teacher Tapp survey found that 60% of heads believed there had been a significant increase in the use of AI within those complaints.
• 1:26
  Is that what you're seeing at school level, and if so, how are you managing?
• 1:30
  We are definitely seeing an increase in the rise of complaints.
• 1:34
  We're seeing a greater increase of complaints coming through the email system opposed to parents calling up school and saying, can I have a meeting or can I have a phone call back.
• 1:43
  So very often when we look at the time stamps of those emails, often they can be sent quite late at night, quite early in the morning.
• 1:49
  And we understand that that is also about the pressures for parents as well.
• 1:52
  Traditionally the advice we gave to schools, settings and trusts was try and nip a complaint in the bud at kind of concern level before it went from 0 to 60 But I'm aware that that's not always possible now and it's not always practical.
• 2:07
  So we used to say to heads, you know make sure you're on the gate for school drop off and pick up and building those relationships with parents so that they feel empowered to come and talk to you about their concerns.
• 2:16
  But I'm conscious that's not always possible.
• 2:18
  Now for sort of three key reasons.
• 2:19
  The first is that a lot of parents are working full time and aren't dropping kids off for picking them The second is that I think there's been a real societal shift in expectation around schools.
• 2:29
  So I think certainly in my parents generation, it was expected that your child fitted in around the school and you were toilet trained when you went to school and an incident happened in school, your parents were absolutely on the school side.
• 2:40
  There was no question about it.
• 2:42
  And I think then thirdly, we can't ignore the rise of social media and those kind of WhatsApp groups as well, where parents seem to between them be able to sort lather up a kind of real frenzy overnight.
• 2:53
  Having kids myself, I've left a couple of those parents WhatsApp groups because they just became so toxic.
• 2:58
  And I think throw in AI where you can make a multi-page complaint in seconds.
• 3:03
  And it strikes me that being able to nip complaints in the bud is really, really challenging.
• 3:07
  So are there different ways you can do it than other than being on the school gate?
• 3:10
  Or do we have to accept that inevitably we are now going to see complaints going from 0 to 60 overnight, and there's not much we can do about that. Yeah.
• 3:18
  If I'm going to start back and unpick some of the things that you brought up there, I think we also have to acknowledge for parents, it's really tricky for them at the moment.
• 3:26
  Some of those resources that, you know, even I was lucky enough to have as a mum, things like really intensive support from children's centers, sure start health visitors that came to your house, people in the community that would support you, family that lived close by maybe.
• 3:42
  So some of our parents have a different expectation of school, not through any fault of their own.
• 3:47
  In terms of believing that a school should potty train or toilet train children, but because nobody has told them any different, or they've not been able to access the resources that they've needed to go through that process.
• 4:00
  So I think when we get some of these complaints, we have to be curious, not furious about why they're coming into us and think, why is it now that those things are happening?
• 4:10
  A vast majority when I've spoken to parents, we had 12 children in a recent reception cohort of children that weren't toilet trained.
• 4:18
  And actually, when you spoke to the parent, the parent desperately wanted to do it but just didn't have the resources or the awareness or the understanding that actually, developmentally, that was what should be done.
• 4:30
  So I think, again, we need to think about the resources that parents have access to and the message that comes out not just on social media, but the news.
• 4:38
  You know, as schools, we were told that we might need to start brushing children's teeth every morning.
• 4:43
  You know, the accountability, even through our news channels, is coming back on schools to do things.
• 4:48
  At our schools in Stevenage, we have things like food recycling banks for parents to use.
• 4:54
  We have pre-loved uniform banks.
• 4:56
  I know at the school I'm the head teacher of, we have a toy bank for some of our parents that need that little bit of extra support with things like birthdays and Christmases.
• 5:04
  So again, I think parents don't know what they don't know.
• 5:07
  And to all of a sudden they can get the message that actually their child isn't at that developmental level can be really hard to hear, because it's not because they didn't want to do Interestingly, somebody put on my desk the other day a little cartoon, and it was a picture of a child in the 70s.
• 5:23
  Imagine a headteachers desk with a little plaque, and the child and the parent are standing behind the desk, and the parent is wagging their finger at the child, saying, why did you do this?
• 5:33
  You know, this is your fault.
• 5:35
  And then it fast forwarded it to the present day and the same day, the same headteacher, the same parent, same child.
• 5:42
  But the finger was pointed towards the head teacher.
• 5:45
  The perception sometimes of schools have shifted.
• 5:48
  In the same way we think about behavior and a lot of us have moved away from behavior policies to relationship policies.
• 5:55
  Again, some of the language that we use around complaints is not helpful.
• 5:58
  What would happen if all of us had listening policies as opposed to complaints policies, because it is that layer of listening.
• 6:06
  Had an email from a parent today, wanted to raise a concern about something had happened at school.
• 6:11
  What was our first instinct?
• 6:13
  Rather than pinging an email back, it was to pick up the phone.
• 6:16
  And again, I think building those relationships is really important.
• 6:19
  I don't always get out of the gate.
• 6:21
  I try and get on the gate least three times a week.
• 6:24
  But actually what I do is I really strive to build those relationships.
• 6:27
  I go and have lunch in my preschool so I can meet my children.
• 6:30
  I'm out there to say goodbye, and I remember things about children so that when we have to have those conversations with parents, there is some already some coins in that relational piggy bank, and every head and every school is going to do that differently.
• 6:43
  But again, a child goes home with a sticker.
• 6:46
  We're all busy people, but to pick up the phone to that parent and say, I'm stood here with your child, they've done the most amazing bit of work.
• 6:53
  You know, it is about trying to get those coins in the bank.
• 6:55
  That doesn't always work.
• 6:57
  we do have AI complaints.
• 6:59
  I had 27 from one parent in one week and all AI generated, and actually it was really tricky to get to crux of what that complaint was.
• 7:10
  And I think when you actually then talk to the parent about what that is, sometimes you're going to have different views on that because we're very limited by the resources that we've got.
• 7:19
  And in my school, it's a big school.
• 7:21
  Those resources are shared by a lot of people, it's really hard as a parent you want your child to have the best that they can.
• 7:27
  And of course, that we want parents to be championing their children and their education.
• 7:33
  But again, I think AI can break down those relationships because it is very wordy.
• 7:40
  It often refers to legal guidance or legislation that when you phone the parent and you say, look, you've listed that, do you understand what this is?
• 7:48
  And they say, well, no, no, no, I don't even know what it is.
• 7:51
  And they're not always understanding how that can come across from the other side.
• 7:55
  But rather than using AI to respond to an AI complaint, sometimes it's just helpful to be able to pick up the phone and just say, right, just tell me you've raised 41 points in this email.
• 8:06
  What's the thing that's the most important thing.
• 8:08
  What do you want to be resolved today.
• 8:10
  And then we'll work through the rest.
• 8:11
  And I think that humanity piece is really, really important.
• 8:15
  And it's interesting because I had cause to complain to an NHS body last week and I actually did use AI to try and help me with the complaint, because it's not my comfort zone but I'd like to think I use AI in a really balanced way, and it generated this complaint for me.
• 8:31
  That was urgent! And you must do this! And I was like, well, that's just going to alienate straight away.
• 8:36
  But I think my concern is, is genuine.
• 8:39
  And actually, you know, the GP were the ones that told me to complain.
• 8:41
  I said to AI, can you change the tone and make it not as confrontational, and it did that.
• 8:46
  But still it's sort of an urgent complaint.
• 8:48
  And I think actually in the end I wrote it from scratch because it came from the heart.
• 8:52
  What I've found in that particular system is a lack of humanity that decisions are being made on a administrative basis, driven by a dashboard.
• 9:00
  And I think that's what education has that, that perhaps the health service doesn't have that we are humans in education.
• 9:06
  And I think really building and optimizing those human relationships is really, really key.
• 9:11
  99.9999% of people that are working in those places are driven by single factor.
• 9:18
  And that is to get the best outcomes for the child.
• 9:22
  They're already on your side.
• 9:24
  They want to get the best for your child.
• 9:26
  So it's really important that parents and schools work together.
• 9:31
  Because at the end of the day, there is this little person that we need to make sure we get the best for moving forward.
• 9:37
  And I think the Parentkind documents.
• 9:39
  In fact I've sent it to my parents today actually via my newsletter, but really, really helpful because again, on social media, you mentioned this I go onto Insta and sometimes Instagram and I come out of it thinking, whoa, because there's lots of posts about the education system being broken.
• 9:54
  if you listen to the news the other day, it was teachers have all got 10% pay rises in the last two years.
• 9:59
  That's not true.
• 10:00
  So there's a lot of fake news out there, but there's also a lot of people that are having very bad experiences.
• 10:05
  And we know that if we're looking at things like social media, if we're using words like disgusting, broken, damaged, that actually gets far more views than somebody that's saying, my child had a happy day today.
• 10:19
  My child has done an amazing thing at school today.
• 10:22
  I went to a fantastic color run at my child's school today.
• 10:26
  And there was, you know, when we do a color run, there's normally about 1500 people.
• 10:29
  Everybody comes, but that won't hit the social media.
• 10:33
  What will hit the comet, our local newspaper or what will hit the WhatsApp group of the parents is when we've got it wrong.
• 10:38
  So it is hard for parents as well.
• 10:41
  Firstly, to feel that that channel is open, that they can raise a concern because there are lots and lots of really valid concerns that parents will bring to us and say, you know I'm not sure about this or this didn't happen.
• 10:54
  I had to apologise today.
• 10:55
  My gate was not open on time because we had a sleepover last night and we were very busy with bed blowing down So it's also about the schools saying, actually we have got it wrong and meeting that parent.
• 11:06
  But I think where sometimes those relationships can be so tricky for some schools and some parents, it's really hard.
• 11:11
  And when you're receiving those 27 emails in a week, firstly it takes away from the time to do your job because ultimately you want to be there improving the outcomes for all of those children, including those children or that child, that concern or the complaint that's been raised for but it's very draining as well, because, again, we came into the profession and stay in the profession because we want to make a difference.
• 11:36
  And I know I take it very personally, if I felt that maybe the difference that I wanted to make for that child hasn't been recognised, or maybe I haven't been able to make it in the way that I wanted to, I don't think I'm easily shockable but I caught a video and it was actually it was a Hertfordshire parent who was complaining about their school in some very ripe language, I have to say, but actually was monetising it.
• 11:59
  So it was, you know, if I get this number of likes, you know, I'll get X amount of money and then I can take this to the next step.
• 12:05
  And I was like, whoa, if we're starting to live in a world where people can monetise raising complaints with schools.
• 12:11
  What hope have we got is really challenging. Yeah.
• 12:13
  And I think it's also quite interesting.
• 12:15
  Facebook is a classic example of this.
• 12:17
  And I set on many groups as a parent so I see this coming up.
• 12:20
  Is also parents don't really understand about sharing their child's information online.
• 12:26
  You know, if you're writing about your child and you're saying, I'm complaining about the school, my son's got x, y, z diagnosis, they haven't done this. He's wet himself.
• 12:35
  He's done this.
• 12:36
  And then you're putting that onto a Facebook group.
• 12:38
  Not anonymised.
• 12:39
  Or you've named the school and you've named the year group so people can guess who it is.
• 12:43
  Actually, that has a real effect on the community.
• 12:46
  So other parents then wonder why you're putting your child's business on social media, particularly if your home school agreement, as ours does, says, you know, bring it to the school.
• 12:56
  But also imagine that person being 18 and looking back on that and seeing that post, or a future employer searching for that surname and the name of the town and that popping up.
• 13:08
  And I think, again, people don't always they are reacting in the moment, driven by this sometimes really toxic culture online.
• 13:17
  They're not thinking through really, has my child given consent for me to put this online?
• 13:23
  Is this, do I need my life broadcast not just in my community, but further?
• 13:29
  It's a really tricky one.
• 13:30
  But again, that's about the layers of listening.
• 13:32
  It's about ensuring that schools have got those opportunities for graduated response so that parents feel heard and listened to.
• 13:39
  And I guess going back to what you were saying around the lack of support for parents as well, I do think sometimes it's easy to fall into the social media trap and not realise that that's the impact.
• 13:49
  And I remember listening to a radio show years ago that was saying that children of the future will end up suing their parents because their whole lives have been put on social media Yes oh, it's already happened.
• 13:58
  Already happened in America And I was like oh isn’t that interesting interesting so I actually stopped.
• 14:01
  And actually, I don't have any photos of my children on social media.
• 14:06
  They’re 17 and 15 now, and they would absolutely kill me if I did anyway.
• 14:09
  But yeah, never did it for that reason., And that has happened in the States now and there's some documentaries where we have sort of influencer parents that have have put that on, you know, put on pictures, you know, literally since, pregnancy of the baby scans.
• 14:25
  And again, I think it's a 12 year old that's won and taken thair parents to court so there's a lot of different sort of threads to this in the way that some of these complaints are being made.
• 14:35
  And also we need to remember when people are online, there are always going to be people that respond and react to that.
• 14:41
  I remember my office manager said something brilliant.
• 14:43
  I'm going to quote her.
• 14:44
  She said, the difficulty with Facebook is it sometimes draws out people that do, have a very extreme view.
• 14:52
  And the large majority of my parents don't actually, honestly say I have a fantastic community.
• 14:57
  Like yesterday, as I said, we had a sleepover, children had a fantastic time.
• 15:01
  how humbling to know that those 45 parents allowed their children to stay over in the school.
• 15:06
  They trusted us.
• 15:07
  The large majority of our parents, if they do have a concern, would bring it to you and it would be resolved, however, that AI complaint when it drops in your email and there's threats of of legal action, there's different legislation that's been quoted.
• 15:22
  It can be something, particularly if the class teacher has to see it, it's very, very upsetting.
• 15:27
  Where we are now, it's not going to go away.
• 15:30
  So it's thinking about practically how we can manage this.
• 15:34
  What we do not want is our money being spent on complaints that are being investigated by leadership for hours and hours and hours, when I should be with the children, or looking at and observing and ensuring the quality of teaching and learning is there.
• 15:48
  Making sure we've got a balanced budget and we certainly don't want, thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds being spent on legal services, because actually that drains the system even more of resources and actually doesn't always get the outcome that parents want.
• 16:04
  And we've talked rightly so about the negative impact of AI on complaints culture, because we're all seeing it and feeling it.
• 16:13
  In HFL we're starting to see it as well, but it strikes me, as the AI does present opportunities to perhaps parents who might not have had a voice.
• 16:21
  English might not be their first language, I agree.
• 16:23
  Have you seen AI give voice to a different set of parents, and if so, have you sort of tweaked anything in your school as a result of that?
• 16:32
  We haven't really seen that so much.
• 16:35
  We find we still use the gates quite a lot for those families to engage them.
• 16:40
  But also, you know, one of the things that we do as a school and firstly run those community events.
• 16:45
  So you can kind of have those soft, informal conversations just to find out how everything's going.
• 16:50
  But the other thing we moved away from, don't know, about 12, 13 years ago is formal parents evenings because we found that our parents were quite reluctant to come to those I know, even as an educator.
• 17:03
  I read them a lot of pressure, wasn't it, to be in a hall or everybody else listening and judging how long you were there and giving you evil eyes if you ran a minute over.
• 17:12
  We've moved to an open evening.
• 17:14
  So our school is our school.
• 17:16
  That's our parents school too.
• 17:17
  We are a community school.
• 17:19
  Parents should feel free to wander around our school in a safe way So on an open evening, 4 to 7, it's open.
• 17:26
  Our lovely catering team put together food for our parents to come and try, and parents are encouraged just to walk around the school.
• 17:33
  If you want to go and speak to somebody about the club that your child attends and the teachers in year four, but your child's in year two wandering and have a chat with them.
• 17:40
  Go and wander around the school, go and feel like that ownership and that belonging is there for you to.
• 17:46
  It's really important for us as schools to not only create that sense of belonging for our children, but also for our families and for our parents.
• 17:53
  And some of our parents have not had the best experience of education themselves as young people.
• 17:59
  So we are already in deficit in that relational piggy bank with some of our parents because they haven't always had a good experience.
• 18:06
  and also, some of our parents come to England not having any experience of the, of the UK education system.
• 18:12
  So just by having little things like that where we engage, we walk around the school, we catch things.
• 18:18
  Philip Tracy has a fantastic book that's called Eat That Frog, and we would always rather eat a frog than leave it to be toady in the corner, and it gets all slimy and icky to eat if you deal with things in that informal way if they do, it's thinking about what you can do as a school that doesn't inflame the situation.
• 18:37
  To lose precious resources, lose precious time, try your best to maintain relationships, and then obviously try and get that toad to something that's a little bit more palatable, like a little frog.
• 18:48
  And I guess, at a time where we're seeing real challenges to community cohesion outside of of schools, where we're seeing other public organisations kind of crumbling and I think driven a lot by KPIs and waiting lists and things it's incumbent to dial up that sort of humanity in those relationships because that's what's going to calm people ultimately It is.
• 19:08
  But also I think it's about schools being really clear about their values and vision.
• 19:12
  So if you come on any tours in our schools, you will always be told our schools are inclusive.
• 19:18
  You will walk into our schools, you will see children with ear defenders, you will see children in wheelchairs, children with hearing aids.
• 19:24
  You might even see children having a little movement break in the corridor because they just need that.
• 19:28
  And that's what suits their needs.
• 19:30
  So we are all about equity, not equality.
• 19:33
  And I think it's about being true to your vision and values and making sure parents are really clear about what you do as a school, because we are all within an education system, but actually the way that schools interpret those statutory duties and the curriculum and their culture and what they offer is very different.
• 19:54
  what we need to remember here is that parents have still got a choice.
• 19:57
  We don't get a choice of which hospital we don't go.
• 20:00
  Actually, we don't want to go to Lister today we're quite fancy, there’s a lovely one over in Slough that we'd quite like to go today.
• 20:05
  You know those organisations, there is no choice.
• 20:08
  Parents are still fortunate enough.
• 20:10
  And with a falling roll in most of our primary schools, I do have to say have got even more choice at the moment because even the oversubscribed typically schools are not oversubscribed.
• 20:21
  So it is about parents also doing their homework, because if I get complaints or if I get queries about parents coming to me and saying, well, actually, my child really needs to sit at the front, but the child that has got the visual impairments sits at the front.
• 20:35
  I've made it very, very clear that as part of our values of the school that we are about giving children what they need, not about making sure that children have got everything, that's exactly the same.
• 20:46
  Something like the organisations you're talking about, we don't always get that choice.
• 20:50
  So it does feel like we're being done to more.
• 20:53
  With education some parents do feel like we're doing to them, but they do still have a choice.
• 20:58
  And I’d quite like to pick up when complaints become really time consuming.
• 21:03
  But we also sometimes see them becoming really personal as well.
• 21:05
  Quite often the complaints that land with HFL by the time they land with us, they have got really, really complex I think I've seen in many cases, headteachers who have done everything reasonable to seek to resolve a complaint.
• 21:20
  But at the heart of that complaint, there are unreasonable demands on the part of the parent that just cannot be met or just are completely unrealistic given the resources available.
• 21:30
  And what we see is almost a snowballing in that instance where initially the parent doesn't get the response they want from the school, so then they rope in the MP and Ofsted and the DfE, and it kind of grows legs overnight.
• 21:40
  But as it goes through the process, it becomes more and more personal and you find at sort of 2 a.m there's these horrible kind of emails fired off about the head teacher.
• 21:49
  When you sort of combine the fact that that is taking so much of the time and distracting from your day job and the personal nature of it.
• 21:56
  How on earth do you ensure your well-being?
• 21:59
  Part of that and we sort of have a sort of unwritten rule as such, we call it our professional cloak.
• 22:05
  And sometimes your professional cloak needs bullet armor particularly you're going to quite challenging meeting to try and get some resources for your child And sometimes, you can let it be soft fabric that you know like the color run day, a great day, I love it.
• 22:18
  I get to catch up with lots of parents unseen in ages.
• 22:20
  I get to see my children really enjoying themselves.
• 22:23
  I get to see the relationships right across the school. It's a fantastic day.
• 22:26
  My cloak can be a little bit less, you know, sort of done up to the nines here.
• 22:31
  Part of what you tell yourself.
• 22:32
  A lot of the information I have to deliver as the school is a professional, opinion.
• 22:38
  It's not always a personal one.
• 22:40
  And I think that's sometimes parents don't always realise that.
• 22:43
  I’m not going to get on a soapbox now about things like SATs, etc.
• 22:47
  But it is really difficult sometimes to have a parent that comes to you that says, you know, my child with mental health difficulties has just had to sit through papers.
• 22:55
  We've made it as manageable and done as many adaptations as we can, but ultimately, as a school, that's what we have to do.
• 23:00
  If that child is at a level that we can put them forward, we have to just think creatively about how we we make that less stressful You have to separate the personal and professional.
• 23:10
  You also have to admit when you've made a mistake and you have to reflect.
• 23:13
  I think I'm incredibly lucky, and I think this is probably a Hertfordshire thing.
• 23:17
  In Hertfordshire our local consortium of heads are fabulous.
• 23:21
  You know, the Stevenage headteacher group is amazing.
• 23:23
  There are lots and lots of heads there where we can call each other if we've had one of those days.
• 23:30
  I'm very fortunate in a trust.
• 23:32
  I have a co-CEO who again I can call and say, right, okay, I'm just going to chat this through with you I think the one thing heads don't do enough of, was have supervision because I think that a lot of my complaints are also linked to safeguarding.
• 23:47
  So where I may have had to make a referral, I often get complaints back and it becomes very, very personal against me.
• 23:53
  And parents don't understand that as schools, my job would be at risk if I didn't follow documents like keeping children safe in education and working together to safeguard children.
• 24:02
  Having those colleagues that understand that context, having those people of just saying got really difficult complaint at the moment and having that person that goes, I know how that feels, you know, make sure this weekend you spend time with your family because sometimes these complaints take up the whole weekend.
• 24:18
  If you're prioritising, you've got assemblies, you've got lots of things that are going on this SATs week.
• 24:24
  When do these complaints get dealt with?
• 24:26
  They don't get dealt with in school time.
• 24:29
  You're up until 11 or 1 o’clock night responding.
• 24:32
  Then you don't want to send anything that you've written at that time of night.
• 24:35
  So you're getting up early to go to school to check.
• 24:37
  And then you're using weekends, which, you know, eats up time with family and friends.
• 24:42
  And I think the other thing is as well is just making sure your policy is really robust.
• 24:46
  We have used the section from the DfE about vexatious complaints.
• 24:50
  And we have an amazing chair of the board, amazing chair of governors, who luckily has a background in safeguarding.
• 24:57
  I’m able to go to her and say 27 in a week.
• 24:59
  I deem that to be vexatious because I haven't even had a chance to open the email before the next one comes through because that strong policy is in place, she is able to support me and look after my well-being and ensure that that policy is followed.
• 25:13
  In closing, Emma, is there any sort of take home you would share with other school leaders around complaints?
• 25:19
  We know we've just had a trust leaders forum and it was actually probably the key issue that everyone felt was a real challenge and needed to be sort of supported centrally by government.
• 25:30
  If there was sort of one take home that you would share with, leaders out there what would that one take home be?
• 25:36
  It was very humbling in that room, we had a lot of people that were going through an awful lot.
• 25:42
  Again, I think my take home for schools is think about those layers of listening, thinking about changing your language in school, thinking about whether this is a concern or a complaint.
• 25:53
  I think the take home for the government is to ensure that where schools have got that policy in place, that they're not doing anything to override those policies.
• 26:01
  So if you can put in a complaint without having evidence like an outcome letter, that you have gone through that schools policy and the various graduated response to that concern or complaint, that to me is worrying because, you know, we do have parents that will, you know, make a complaint without the substance behind it or without ever going to the school.
• 26:24
  So it's really important that I think the government support that.
• 26:28
  And I think for us as heads, we also have to protect our staff.
• 26:33
  You know, staff are doing more and more in schools with less.
• 26:37
  They are championing children.
• 26:39
  They are wanting to be there because they want to make a difference, and they spend more time with your child than they do with their own children at home.
• 26:47
  We all have the same purpose.
• 26:48
  So just think, approach the school.
• 26:51
  If you've got a concern, deal with it when it's a frog, don't just sit there and worry about it and then one day it feels like it's too big to manage.
• 26:58
  Just come and speak to us.
• 27:00
  And again, if you're not getting the response, go through the graduated response.
• 27:04
  That's why it's there, because an Ofsted complaint can easily sap two weeks of my work.
• 27:11
  And actually when it was a completely unsubstantiated, untrue complaint.
• 27:17
  That's a lot of time are children are never going to get back.
• 27:20
  So just just have a think.
• 27:22
  Always ask if needed.
• 27:23
  Fantastic.
• 27:24
  Emma, thank you so much for giving up your time.
• 27:26
  You do make a huge difference, which is exactly why we asked you to come on the podcast, because you really are an inspiration to our community.
• 27:33
  So thank you for giving up your time.
• 27:35
  If you enjoyed this podcast, do like and subscribe and we will see you on next week's episode. Thank you.