Decision report 201201435

Summary

Mr and Mrs C’s twin children attended a local primary school but were placed in separate classes. Mr and Mrs C considered that one of their children had been subjected to bullying by classmates over an extended period since late 2011. Unhappy about the way the head teacher of the school had handled the matter, they asked the council’s education service to intervene, and in early 2012 a council quality improvement officer chaired a meeting in the school. Subsequently, Mr and Mrs C reported various other incidents in the summer term and, dissatisfied with the education service’s handling of the matter, they complained to the service.

Mr and Mrs C made six complaints to us. We did not uphold two of these: that the education service unreasonably failed to follow disciplinary procedures to prevent the bullying of their child or that the education service unreasonably failed to implement agreed support measures to assist their child. We upheld the remaining four complaints, one of which was that the school unreasonably failed to return a phone call when Mr and Mrs C had taken the step of withdrawing their child from school. The other three complaints related to complaints handling and the sharing of information about the education service’s investigation and notes of two meetings Mr and Mrs C attended with officers during the investigation process.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• apologise to Mr and Mrs C for the deficiencies in the handling of their complaints identified in our investigation.