Recently, The Guardian reported that school principals in New South Wales need urgent help to manage increasingly poor behaviour by parents on social media. I would argue that, and I am sure that principals across the country would agree, this behaviour pattern is not just a New South Wales phenomenon.

But what has this got to do with complaints?

A simple response is that these “online pile-ons”, “social media hate campaigns” and “slanging matches”, as described in the article, must have some initial source or issue. In general, people do not vent their frustrations on social media or on any other platform without a catalyst that sparks this process. In most cases, the catalyst would be a complaint of some sort.

Sadly, once a social media post gains attention (goes viral), it is often like a snowball tumbling down a hill. It gathers size, it gathers momentum, it becomes more dangerous and, usually, people who get caught up in the maelstrom of commentary either do not know or forget the original catalyst or complaint.

Nonetheless, some of the outcomes of this flurry of online criticisms and venting are that these matters take far longer to resolve and they create stress and heavier workloads for the school principals. Almost 90 per cent of NSW school leaders told the 2021 NSW Secondary Principals’ Council (SPC) survey that these matters were affecting their wellbeing. SPC president, Craig Petersen, was quoted as saying that parents had forgotten how to deal with problems face to face or over the phone and it was creating an unsustainable position for principals who were being left bogged down and demoralised.

Why Use Social Media?

Parents, for a variety of reasons, may have an issue with a school’s facilities, the actions of a teacher or other staff member or with some of the school’s procedures. In most schools, these issues would often be addressed as complaints and dealt with through the school’s complaints system. However, sometimes parents choose not to raise their concerns or deal with the problems through the school’s established processes.

This could be because the school’s complaints processes are not well known, not easily accessible or considered to be too difficult, or perhaps the parents believe that they will not be given a fair hearing. In some cases, the parents may be right, and the school may not have a record of dealing with complaints or concerns effectively or a culture that values complaints and feedback from parents.

Sometimes, even when the complaints process has been concluded, parents may still be unhappy and may decide to vent their frustrations using social media. If this occurs, schools should consider whether the outcomes of their process correctly addressed the parents’ concerns and whether the process enabled the parents to communicate those concerns and feel that they were heard.

Managing the Situation Before It Spirals Out of Control-a Sense of Deja Vu

School Governance wrote about the move from parent gossip in the school carpark to social media in 2017. We commented that:

“…the level of car park gossip was usually directly proportional to the level of access to the principal of the school. Basically, if the school did not encourage parents to raise concerns or complaints with the principal or other relevant staff, the problems used to be aired and shared with other parents in the car park.  Then came social media.”

In 2019 in, Social Media and Effective Complaints Management - Embracing Complaints to Improve and Move Forward it was noted that, 3.2 billion people (46 per cent of the world’s population) were using some form of social media every day. By January of 2020, this number had increased to 3.8 billion and this is expected to increase to 4.1 billion by 2025.

In response to what CompliSpace saw as an ongoing trend, in April 2020, School Governance published this article Complaints in the COVID-19 Digital Teaching Environment- How Will Your School Handle Them? where we stated:

“Schools need to assume that complaints, if they are not captured and responded to in an expeditious and transparent manner, may in all probability and due to social isolation practices, end up being discussed on social media rather than in the school carpark or the local coffee shop. These social media chats may remain on the internet forever! Before the current social isolation practices, schools would have dealt with a combination of personal face-to-face, email or over the phone complaints. Now that social isolation practices are in full swing, and most students are learning remotely at home with their parents and carers there will be almost no personal face-to-face complaints.”

We also noted:

“In the COVID-19 environment, people are using social media and online technologies far more regularly. Complaints shared online will be shared rapidly and could result in reputational damage at a time when schools may struggle to retain students due to financial pressures on parents.”

However, we are not trying to say, “we told you so”.

What we are arguing is that schools that take proactive steps that include identifying the risk of complaints on social media spiralling out of control and then proceed to identify this risk and others associated with it, will be able to better manage this type of parent behaviour.

Schools need valid controls (policies, training and processes) to ensure that parents have a voice and are able to raise their concerns, queries, issues or complaints in a manner and on a platform that gives them support and confidence that their problems are being heard and addressed.

However, not all is lost. Schools that identify their complaints risks and implement controls that will assist to reduce this trend of online commentary, will be able to return some time to their already overloaded principals to actually lead and manage their schools and care for the students.

Complaints Handling Risks for Schools

CompliSpace has identified several risks in the area of complaints. They include:

• a failure to establish and effectively communicate the school's complaints policy and procedures and capture, monitor, record, respond to and analyse all complaints
• a failure by the school to train staff in the complaints management process and the training is not standardised
• a failure by the school to appoint a “complaints officer” who is empowered to either resolve complaints or be aware of, and have access to, the person who has the authority to do so
• a failure by the school to keep the personal information of the complainant, and any people who are the subject of a complaint, confidential, and failure to restrict the use of personal information to the purposes of addressing the complaint and any follow up actions.

These risks are as valid in the digital world as they are in the physical school environment.

Strategies and Recommendations to Mitigate Against These Risks

Schools could handle all types of complaints, online, vocal or face to face, effectively and efficiently through:

• the establishment, implementation and maintenance of a complaints program that operates in an online environment
• the appointment of a Complaints Manager to oversee the program
• the appointment and training of senior staff to act as Complaints Officers who are available and trained to deal with all online and telephone complaints
• a clearly visible part of their public website (preferably with a search function) that provides information as to how to lodge a complaint and or feedback with the school
• online or video training for staff in all complaints handling procedures to ensure that staff who are public facing are skilled in triage management of complaints and know how to and to whom to direct the complainants
• ensuring that the complaints handling procedures are accessible to all parents/carers and other external parties
• ensuring that their complaints program has child-friendly procedures that are age appropriate
• having a system, with complaints handling guidelines, designed to capture complaints and track actions and outcomes
• the regular analysis of complaints received and the implementation of rectification action where deficiencies in the online program and procedures are identified
• reports, based on the analysis of the complaints data, provided to the executive team and to the governing body.

In addition, schools need to ensure that:

• their complaints policy, where relevant, is available in different languages and formats (particularly for overseas students)
• there is flexibility in the methods of making a complaint. Provision should be made for verbal complaints, not just online complaints
• it should be easy to understand the system for making complaints

Above all, parents need to be assured that their complaints will be heard, acted on and then resolved in a manner that retains or builds their confidence in the school.

Conclusion

It is well known and accepted that if a parent wants to complain about your school, they have the world’s biggest megaphone at their fingertips.

While positive news often travels slowly, negative comments about your school will travel faster than the speed of light via social media.

One negative experience broadcast over the internet megaphone has the power to severely damage your school’s reputation and undo years of hard work.

Any way you look at it, not properly managing complaints is going to cost your school dearly. All schools get complaints. The key is to identify the risks that they pose, apply effective controls that manage them effectively and then turn the complaints to your advantage.