Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to introduce a standardised complaints process for academy schools.

​​All academies are required to have a complaints process which adheres to Part 7 of the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014. This sets out that it is the academy’s responsibility to handle and resolve any complaints. If a complainant has concerns that an academy did not handle a complaint in line with the regulations, they can then escalate to the department, whose role it is to consider whether the academy followed the correct process.

The department’s ‘Best practice guidance for academies complaints procedures’ can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/setting-up-an-academies-complaints-procedure/best-practice-guidance-for-academies-complaints-procedures.

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