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Sharing your views about education
Sharing your views about education
There are lots of ways you can share your views and get involved in local decision making about education. We share opportunities to share your views about a range of education topics in our News Section, but we have shared some of the most common ways of sharing your views.
If you have feedback about something and you don’t know where to send it, you can contact the Family Information Service and we can try to find the best place for you to send your feedback.
Check out our You Said, We Did Section which outlines feedback we have received about Special Educational Needs and/or Disability (SEND) provision in the borough and steps the Local Authority has taken to address feedback.
If you have feedback, compliments, comments, concerns, questions, or any view you want to share about you or your child’s education, you can share this however you like to. If it is about you or your child’s school, college or other education setting you should contact them directly.
If you have feedback about what is generally available in Tower Hamlets (regardless of who provides whatever it is that you want), you can contact the Local Authority here.
If something has very gone wrong, and you think it is important that something changes, it might be appropriate to raise your concerns formally, we explain more about this below.
Consultations and events
The Local Authority, and organisations working with us, regularly do big projects and events (sometimes called consultations) to get feedback from the community about a wide range of topics. Usually these are done with an online survey. Let’s Talk Tower Hamlets holds the details about most consultations about services provided by the Local Authority.
We share consultation events relevant to education, SEND, health and social care on the Local Offer Events Section. For example, Let’s Talk SEND shares information and updates about SEND services and education in Tower Hamlets and gives parents/young people the opportunity to share their feedback.
If you can’t go to a consultation event, but would like to, you can often contact the organiser and tell them what you think about the topics they were asking for feedback about.
Groups and organisations
There are different groups and organisations whose job it is to get information about how people in the community feel about education (and other topics). These organisations may hold their own events or consultation activities where you can share your views, or you can join and be a member.
We have listed some of these organisations below:
- Tower Hamlets Parent and Carer Council
- The Tower Hamlets Youth Council
- Our Time All Ability Youth Forum
- Tower Hamlets Independant SEND Parent and Carer Forum
- Somali Parent and Carers Network
- Children and Family Centre Parent and Carer Forums (ask your local centre what they have)
- The Dad's Network
- School / College specific groups (ask you or your child's education setting if they have one)
Serious problems: complaints and other formal processes
If you think it is important that something changes, or you really aren’t happy, giving feedback in formal way might be appropriate. For example, if you are unhappy with your child’s education, you could ask for a meeting with the school to discuss your concerns. It can be helpful to ask that someone who has responsibility for the problem, or has the authority make the changes you want is present in the meeting.
If you are very unhappy about something, you can make a complaint if you want to. For complaints to be considered formally, you need to put them in writing. This could be by email, letter or through the complaints portal on the Tower Hamlets website. For complaints about a school, you need to follow the school’s complaints process, which will be on their website.
For some issues, there are official or legal channels you can go through to help solve your problem. You can visit our problems in education section for more information.
If you want to know more about ways you can try and solve a problem, you can contact the Family Information Service and we can try and find out for you.