The school is being criticised publicly and you’re not sure whether to respond
Before deciding how to answer, decide whether the criticism is right and whether answering is yours to do.
Read this first. If the criticism concerns a named member of staff, a child, an allegation, a safeguarding matter, an employment matter or anything that may become a legal question, it is not a communications problem and this record does not govern it. Identify the procedure that applies, the person who owns it, and follow that route before considering any response. What follows concerns ordinary public criticism of the school. Something is circulating: a post, a review, a letter copied to other people, a conversation in the town that has reached you. It may be unfair. It may also be accurate. The instinct is to decide how to answer, and two decisions come before that one: whether the criticism is true, and whether a public answer is yours to give. Taking those in the wrong order is how a single complaint becomes an episode.
Presenting symptoms
- You have drafted a reply and not sent it, more than once.
- Staff are asking whether the school is going to say anything, and some have replied on their own accounts.
- The criticism has been repeated by people who were not there and have no direct knowledge of it.
Possible causes
- The criticism may be substantially accurate, in which case the question is what changes rather than what is said.
- It may be inaccurate or misleading in a specific, correctable way, which is different from being unwelcome.
- It may be the visible part of a complaint, allegation, safeguarding matter, employment issue or legal process that is already running or should be.
- Responding may make it larger than it is, or may require information the school is not free to share.
It is substantially accurate.
Your most useful next step: Acknowledge it rather than contesting it, and say what will change and by when. The book’s sequence applies: take ownership, set out how it will be put right, be transparent about the timeline and any constraints, and then find the root cause so that it does not recur. Do this through the school’s own channels to its own community, and then do the thing you said.
Lead behaviours
It is inaccurate or misleading in a specific way.
Your most useful next step: Correct the specific factual point, once, plainly, and stop. Explain the reasoning behind the decision that was criticised if it can be explained without disclosing anything protected. Do not argue the general case and do not respond to replies: a proportionate correction that is repeated becomes a dispute.
Lead behaviours
It is connected to a complaint, an allegation, a safeguarding matter, an employment issue or a legal process.
Your most useful next step: Stop treating it as a communications question. Identify the procedure that applies and the person who owns it, and follow that route. Where a process is already running, say nothing publicly that touches its substance, and record what was said and where. Nothing in this record overrides that procedure.
Lead behaviours
Responding would make it larger, or would require saying something you are not free to say.
Your most useful next step: Decide not to respond, deliberately and on the record, rather than by drift. Tell your leadership team and anybody likely to be asked what has been decided and why, so that silence is a position the school is holding rather than an absence. Then work out what the criticism is telling you about the school, which may be worth more than the answer would have been.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
The book describes the discipline of confronting the reality of a situation rather than the comfortable reading of it, and insists this is a foundation for progress rather than pessimism. Everything in this record depends on one finding: whether the criticism is true. A leader who decides how to answer before establishing that has committed the school to a position it may not be able to hold, and the commonest way this goes wrong is defending something nobody has yet checked.
Most of the book’s chapter is about what a leader does once a mistake has happened: acknowledge it, take ownership, set out a plan to put it right, be transparent about the timeline and any constraints, and identify the root cause so it does not recur. That is the whole of the first route here. It also supplies the warning that most applies: what people will not tolerate is not the mistake but the failure of foresight, and a criticism that turns out to be accurate is usually evidence of the second.
The book describes thinking through second and third-order effects before acting, and is explicit that this is about weighing risk rather than eliminating it. A public response is exactly such an action. It can enlarge an item that would have passed, invite replies the school must then either answer or visibly ignore, and draw in people who had not heard of it. The question to ask before responding is who else sees it and what it starts.
The book’s core discrimination is between what a leader can influence and what lies outside it, with the warning that dwelling on the second consumes capacity. What other people write and repeat is outside your control. What the school actually does about the substance, whether a formal route is followed, what staff are asked to do, and what the school says through its own channels are all within it. That discrimination is also what identifies a matter that belongs to a procedure rather than to you.
The book treats emotional regulation as a skill of noticing, pausing and choosing a response that reflects your values rather than your feelings, and is clear it is not suppression. Public criticism of a school lands on the person who has given most to it, and the reply drafted in the first hour is the one most likely to be regretted. The book’s point that the leader’s temperature sets the tone applies to staff who are deciding whether to reply on their own accounts.
Secondary behaviours
Use this where the criticism is of a decision rather than of a failure. The book defines the behaviour as articulating the purpose behind a decision so that people understand rather than merely comply, and a decision that looks arbitrary from outside is the commonest subject of this kind of criticism. It applies only where the reasoning can be given without disclosing anything protected.
Use this on the school’s own communication to its own community, which is the subject of the book’s chapter: an organisational message reinforced through more than one route, because people hear it later than you said it. It does not extend to a running public exchange, and a correction that is repeated in reply to replies is not this behaviour.
A useful first action
Before drafting anything, establish whether the substance of the criticism is accurate, from the record and from the people actually involved. Until you know that, you cannot tell whether you are dealing with a correction, an acknowledgement, or a matter that belongs to a formal procedure.
Suggested approach
- Establish whether the criticism is substantially accurate, from the record and the people involved, before deciding anything about a response.
- Check whether it is connected to a complaint, an allegation, a safeguarding matter, an employment issue or a legal process. If it is, it follows that route and stops being a communications question.
- Establish who is authorised to respond: you, the trust, the governing body, or nobody.
- Where it is accurate, acknowledge it through the school’s own channels, say what will change and by when, and then do it.
- Where it is inaccurate and a response is authorised, correct the specific point once, plainly, and do not answer replies.
- Where a response would enlarge it or require protected information, decide not to respond, say so internally so that it is a held position, and record the decision.