Hotline advice expressed here, and in calls to us, is made in good faith to our members. Schools and colleges should always take formal HR or legal advice from their indemnified provider before acting.

Leaders' surgery

Racial reports

Q: I am a headteacher in a stand-alone academy. One of our supportive parents has been to see me to say that in a public environment they have heard my chair of governors making repeated racist comments. There appears to be substance in what she is saying, and I, from what I know of the chair, am not surprised. This is especially difficult as the chair of governors is also the chair of the trust. What should I do?

A: First, check if governors/ directors are explicitly covered within any of your behaviour policies or codes of conduct. If they are, then you need to follow set procedures, but it is more likely the policies are ‘silent’ on such issues. Either way, such a claim needs to be investigated and this needs to be done formally.

Our advice would be to ask your legal or HR providers to do this. As chief executive, you do need to advise the chair that such a complaint has been made, and that ‘policies’ mean it needs to be formally investigated. If it is appropriate, you can ‘advise’ that the chair stands aside in the interests of the school during the investigation, but you can’t insist. Only the governors/ directors can ‘remove’ the chair and if necessary, a meeting can be called to make this happen. However, you must follow the advice of your legal providers throughout.

How to handle ‘constant’ enquiries

Q: I am a deputy head. I have a parent who I consider is making unreasonable contact with the school. This individual is persistent on issues we have tried to address. We receive long emails, continuous visits and aggressive phone calls. We have always prided ourselves on working well with parents, but this parent is becoming a real problem to the school. What are my options?

A: This is an increasingly common event. Never the less, school stakeholders, including parents, have a right to raise concerns or complain and the first stage is always to try and meet to resolve any issues. After this however, you must get the complaint into a formal process following school policies and procedures. In the interim, you can limit to whom emails or phone calls are made; you can limit your response to (say) once a week. If the parent is causing a nuisance on site, you have powers to exclude them from the site under section 547 of the 1996 Education and Inspection Act.

In addition if the complaint has been through a process and the parent continues to raise the issue (or related issues) you can simply not respond (although it would be good practice to inform the parent that having exhausted all procedures no further responses will be made to the same or similar complaints).

However difficult, under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts, you may be required to send copies of reports to the complainant. For more advice, see the section about serial complainants in the Best Practice Advice for School Complaints Procedures 2016 guidance paper from the DfE (www.gov.uk/government/publications/schoolcomplaints-procedures)

Questioning the ‘party’ line

Q: I am a headteacher. I am new in post and there is a tradition in the school of staff going to the sixth form Christmas party. I understand that alcohol flows freely, and behaviour in the past has not been totally professional. I am uncomfortable about this – what should I do as I don’t want to seem to be a killjoy to the sixth form?

A: Times are now very different from when this ‘tradition’ started and you must take action to stop the previous pattern for the sake of your school, its staff and the students. A sixth form party is fine, but if it is organised through the school then you do have a responsibility, on behalf of the school, to check the arrangements are suitable and that the law will not be broken (e.g. on alcohol). It seems as though that the situation you are describing may be a party organised by the students and to which staff have been invited. If this is the case, then staff are placing themselves, and the school, in a very vulnerable position. You should take a very firm stance and inform staff that if they do attend on this basis, they are likely to face disciplinary action for breaching professional boundaries that may also result in them being referred to a Professional Conduct Panel of the NCTL.

Reverting to the previous possible scenario of an organised party by the school, if staff do go to the party, it should be in a supervisory role and you should therefore expect full professional standards from them.

Increased workloads causing concern

Q: I am an operations director in a multi-academy trust. We have been under pressure to take into the trust two primary schools to add to the large secondary and two primaries we already have. As a result, what was already a large workload has become unbearable, and I cannot see how in the long-term I will be able to do everything for five schools. The trust directors and executive head are full of praise for my work, but they seem oblivious to my predicaments.

A: It is unreasonable for the directors and executive head to ask you to do all of the work required for the transfers of these additional schools without any help. You should advise them that they could use a significant amount of the ‘transfer grant’ of £25,000 per school to enable your ‘ordinary’ workload to be reduced so that you can concentrate on the strategic aspects of the transfers and the oversight of others’ work.

In addition, you can seek paid-for ‘consultancy’ for specific tasks, for example, you could ask your auditors /HR providers to complete specific elements of the financial/HR work. In the longer-term, you should advise the directors that they may need to appoint additional staff in your team to release you to undertake the strategic work.

Furthermore, if your work is now of a greater job weight or responsibility, you could ask the trust to consider increasing your level of remuneration. For further support, please contact the ASCL Hotline.

Contact the hotline

ASCL members concerned about leadership issues should call the Hotline on 0116 299 1122 or email hotline@ascl.org.uk

David Snashall and Rachel Bertenshaw are ASCL Hotline Leaders

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