Department for Education

4. Mrs A complains that the DfE incorrectly signposted her to the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) after she raised concerns about a college, and subject matter, which sat outside that organisation’s remit.

5. She also complains about the way the DfE handled her complaint about this issue. She says: • It communicated poorly and did not deal properly with her complaint.

• It investigated her complaint in two days. During this brief time, it said it had fed back the issue and improved its training. She does not believe DfE considered her complaint thoroughly, or that it has delivered any meaningful service improvements. She suspects its response was intended to get rid of her.

• It did not provide her with a formal complaint response, which made submitting it to our office difficult.

6. Mrs A says the whole experience has caused her great upset and describes it as ‘traumatising’. She said she was in tears while dealing with DfE, her stomach was in knots, she felt sick, and it was like a black cloud was following her. Dealing with DfE also took her away from childcare duties for her autistic child.

7. She would like the DfE to introduce service improvements and award her with compensation.

Complaint background

8. In February 2025, Mrs A complained to us about what she believed was the DfE’s failure to properly investigate concerns she had raised about a college. Although we did not uphold her complaint, we found that the DfE had not fully addressed one part of it. In particular, when responding to her complaint, it had wrongly suggested she raise her concerns with Ofsted, even though Ofsted was not the right body to look at this issue. For that reason, we asked the DfE to look at that specific point again.

9. In November 2025, the DfE responded to Mrs A’s concerns. It said that, although it had not directly told her to contact Ofsted, its earlier responses had been misleading and had given that impression. The DfE apologised for the confusion this caused and said it would remind staff of the correct process.

Administration background

10. If a member of public is unhappy with the outcome of a complaint about an educational establishment, such as a further education college, they can escalate their complaint to the DfE.

11. DfE’s online guidance, ‘Complaints procedure’, outlines what should happen. If the matter is in within its remit, it will investigate it. If the complainant is not satisfied with its response, it will advise them who to contact next if they feel the issue has not been dealt with properly. The guidance does not stipulate who service users should contact next, as this will vary depending on the subject matter. However, it does say they should escalate their complaint to our office if they are unhappy with DfE.

12. According to online government guidance, ‘Complain about a school’, if a parent has a complaint about SEN, and the matter has not been resolved by the educational establishment, they should raise a complaint with the local authority.

13. DfE’s corporate guidance, ‘Complaints procedure’, outlines the process for making complaints about DfE.

14. To make a complaint, the complainant must provide it with as much detail as they can: • Explain what the problem is • Explain what they would like to happen • Provide information on any relevant communication • Address their complaint to the person responsible, if they have a name

15. Once the complainant has submitted the complaint, it will try to reply within 15 working days. If this is not possible, it will let the complainant know and tell them what is happening and when they can expect a response.

DfE’s referral to Ofsted

18. We should be clear that we have not looked again at the concerns Mrs A originally raised about the DfE. This is because we already considered those issues in our earlier work. In this case, we have focused only on the incorrect signposting and the impact it had on Mrs A.

19. There is no dispute that the DfE should not have suggested to Mrs A that she raise her concerns with Ofsted. As Ofsted explained in its response to Mrs A’s approach, the college she was complaining about did not fall into Ofsted’s remit. It also explained that, in any event, the specific concerns she had raised (which were in connection with Special Educational Needs provision) were rightly matters to be considered the relevant Local Authority, not Ofsted. As we have said earlier, this is something the DfE’s own guidance confirms.

20. Under our Principles of Good Administration – being customer focused – we expect organisations to behave helpfully and ensure that, if they are unable to help, to refer them to other appropriate sources of help. Ofsted’s failure to do so in this instance was an error.

21. Mrs A says the incorrect signposting delayed her from raising her concerns to a higher body. She said it was like ‘Groundhog Day’ when she found out Ofsted could not look at her case, and that she was going around in circles without receiving any help. We recognise that this mistake was likely to have caused Mrs A unnecessary confusion. However, we have also seen earlier correspondence showing that the DfE had already advised her several times to raise her concerns with the Local Authority.

22. We saw further evidence that Mrs A had contacted the Local Authority and received responses. Whilst we cannot comment on those responses, this shows that, despite the DfE’s mistake, Mrs A knew what the correct route was and had already used it. Because of that, we cannot say the DfE’s error had a significant effect on the progress of her complaint or caused a meaningful delay. Nor did it prevent her from raising her concerns with our office.

23. We can appreciate the DfE’s signposting to Ofsted would have added to her frustration. Under our Principles of Remedy, we expect organisations to take action to put matters like this right, and in many cases an apology may be sufficient and appropriate, depending on the severity of the injustice. We can see the DfE has much such an apology and are satisfied that this, together with the action it has taken to address the matter internally, are enough to put matters right for Mrs A.

DfE’s complaint handling

24. Mrs A said that, after her initial contact with our office, the DfE did not deal promptly with her continuing complaint, despite our recommendation that it should do so. We have looked carefully at this point and have not found evidence of maladministration.

25. We should explain that, when we asked the DfE to look at the matter again, we also asked Mrs A to be specific with the DfE about what concerns remained outstanding. We explained that we expected the DfE to reconsider only the signposting to Ofsted. We did not expect it to revisit her earlier concerns, because those had already been dealt with.

26. Unfortunately, when Mrs A went back to the DfE, her contact referred to a significant number of the issues she had raised before. Because of this, it was not clear to the DfE that her complaint was now only about the signposting issue. In those circumstances, it is understandable that the DfE thought she was asking it to revisit matters it had already considered, and that it initially refused to reopen the complaint.

27. After we contacted the DfE directly, the position was clarified. From that point, the DfE responded to Mrs A’s concerns in the way we had expected.

28. Mrs A has also said she was unhappy that, once the position was clarified, the DfE took only a few days to send its response. She believes this suggests her complaint was not considered fully or carefully.

29. We understand why Mrs A might feel that a quick response meant her complaint was not looked at properly. But we do not agree that this was the case here. We expect organisations to investigate complaints thoroughly, but also to act fairly and proportionately. The evidence shows this complaint was about one clear issue, so it was reasonable that the DfE could respond quickly, especially as it was able to accept it had made a mistake. We have seen nothing to suggest the time taken was unreasonable or that the response lacked proper consideration.

30. Finally, Mrs A complains DfE did not provide her with a formal complaint response, which made submitting her complaint to our office difficult. Under normal circumstances, we would expect an organisation’s final complaint response to be more formal and refer them to our office. However, in this case, DfE was working with our office to respond to the complaint. In keeping with this, it sent a copy of its complaint response for our attention which allowed us to open a new case for Mrs A more quickly than may otherwise have been the case. This was helpful and in line with our principle for ‘Being customer focused’.

31. As such, there are no indications DfE’s complaint handling fell short of the relevant standards or our expectations.

1. Having carefully consider the evidence in this case, we have decided to take no further action on Mrs A’s complaint. This is because we are satisfied that the DfE has already done enough to put right the error it made in incorrectly signposting Mrs A to an inappropriate organisation.

2. We are sorry to learn about the events which led to Mrs A’s complaint, and we recognise what a difficult and frustrating time this has been for her’

3. We appreciate why this complaint is important to Mrs A and we will explain our decision in more detail below. We hope our explanation provides her with reassurance about how carefully we have considered her complaint before reaching our decision.