“Article 6: Internal complaints procedure
F1. The school must have in place written procedures for how it will deal with complaints and students’ requests for appeals against IB programme decisions taken by the school, ensure that details of these procedures are made widely available and accessible to all students, and operate in accordance with such procedures.
F2. The school must inform parents or legal guardians about the school’s procedures for addressing complaints and students’ requests for appeals of IB programme decisions taken by the school.” (Rules for IB World Schools 4).
Definitions and limitations
“IB programme decisions” refer specifically to decisions made by AISL or its leadership teams that impact a student’s completion of, or engagement with, IB programmes and/or courses. These include, but are not limited to:
Decisions relating to a candidate’s subject or graduation pathways placement;
Involuntary withdrawal of a candidate’s IB registration(s) for academic malpractice or for other reasons;
The application of AISL’s academic integrity policy to a particular case;
Not sharing IB predicted grades with candidates;
The selection of courses/subjects available at AISL;
Declaring a student to be not in good standing and thus not eligible to write or complete a DP exam;
The non-enrolment of students as retake candidates (for example, if they fail to meet AISL’s re-take registration deadlines);
IB programme decisions do not include decisions related to students’ AISL report cards, High School Diploma or transcripts, or to problems arising between students and individual teachers. Complaints regarding such issues will be dealt with via AISL’s Communication Guidelines as set forth in the divisional handbooks. For appeals against a teacher’s reported university predicted grade, families should follow the appeals procedure outlined in the Diploma Programme Handbook.
If a student wants to appeal a grade awarded by the IB after the issue of results, there is a separate appeals process outlined in General Regulations: Diploma Programme.
Procedure
The student and/or legal guardian should share their complaint directly with the relevant Coordinator via email, and/or request a meeting with the relevant Coordinator to discuss the situation that the student/guardian considers to be unfair.
The Coordinator will include the Principal and Assistant Principal on any communication with the family.
If a meeting is held, minutes should be taken; if necessary, this can be done by a third party. These should be shared with the family afterwards via email.
If the issue remains unresolved, the student and/or legal guardian can bring the matter to the Director’s attention via email.
The Director will inform the relevant Leadership Team members that the matter has been escalated. The Director will investigate further to determine whether procedure was followed, and whether the decision made was in line with IB rules and regulations, and with AISL policy. The Director will communicate their findings to the family within 5 working days. The Director’s decision is final.
Should the matter still remain unresolved to the family’s satisfaction, they may bring the matter to the Board’s attention. The Board will inform the Director and relevant Leadership Team that the matter has been brought to their attention. They will review the case to confirm that the decision and investigations were carried out ethically. The Board will inform the family within 5 working days.
IB Complaints procedure developed by the following educational leadership team members during the 2022-23 school year
Simone Lieschke, PYP Coordinator
Ingrid Turner, MYP Coordinator
Monica Murphy, DP Coordinator
Fiona Moss, Secondary Assistant Principal
Dr. Rick Odum, Secondary Principal
Dr. Oli Tooher-Hancock, AISL Director