Oaklands Catholic School and Sixth Form College

 Parental Engagement with School

Oaklands school staff are here to help. Please ensure all communication, whether written or verbal, in person or at distance, is polite and courteous. School staff will not continue conversations, discussions or meetings if they feel intimidated, threatened or are abused. We have a Complaints Procedure for use when you are dissatisfied with how the school has dealt with an issue or concern. Some advice is given below to help ensure your concern is quickly resolved.

• Meetings will be arranged when appropriate and necessary in the school’s view. The school will decide who is best placed to discuss the matter with you. Please do not demand meetings with specific members of staff or refuse to meet with the staff identified by the school as best placed to deal with your concern.
• Any meeting in school is a confidential matter, the details of which will not be discussed with other parents, equally parents are asked not to discuss, outside of the meeting, confidential matters related to their child, or publish the same on social media. The school in communication may draw reference to groups of parents but will not make specific references to any child or incident without parental permission.
• Child protection concerns or those relating to safety will be dealt with swiftly. In other cases, appointments to see members of staff will need to be made further in advance. This is because school staff are busy and unlikely to be available straightaway. Please do not come into school Reception in the hope that a forceful demand will mean you can circumvent an appointment.
• Inflammatory comments or statements should be avoided. When expressing concerns, the tone should be courteous at all times. Emotive and accusatory words such as ‘disgusting’, use of capitals or defamatory statements should not be included. Concerns should be limited to the current situation and not draw on past events or those which have been dealt with previously.
• Concerns and complaints should be taken up with the person who was most directly involved in the incident, unless it is of a very personal nature to do with that staff member. In that case it should be addressed to their Head of Department. In line with the complaints policy, the Headteacher should not be involved immediately and will only become involved when the correct procedure has been followed. This is to ensure a suitably neutral review of your concern, if necessary, at a later stage.
• When raising a concern, it is likely that you will have one version of the matter based on the information you have. If you have a concern, please do not publish this on social media as this may compromise the school’s ability to manage the matter objectively.
• All complaints are taken seriously and dealt with in a timely manner. We will work to resolve them. Threatening staff with the press, local authority or Ofsted is not a means to fast-forward your complaint.

Please note any concerns and complaints which are received and do not comply with our expectations indicated above will be unattended until the communications meet the expectations outlined above.

Parents or carers who breach these terms will be subject to restricted access to staff.

These standards apply to written, verbal  and in person communication.