Despite extensive legal obligations to effectively manage complaints, many schools in Australia only pay lip-service to the practice.
This paper examines the legal framework within which Australian schools are required to implement complaints handling processes and examines how these legal obligations compare to best practice (as benchmarked by the International and Australian Complaints Handling Standard “AS-ISO 10002-2014 Customer satisfaction – Guidelines for complaints handling in organisations).
The paper highlights the numerous benefits of effective complaints management within schools and the dangers that schools face in the event that they fail to capture and control negative feedback, particularly in the social media age.
Finally, the paper makes recommendations for moving forward and embracing best practice corporate governance and complaints handling processes within schools.