One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was from a friend in the restaurant business. If I were planning to complain about any part of my meal or service, he said, I should wait until I had eaten all I was going to eat that night. He illustrated this warning with examples of what can happen to food prepared for awkward customers, and so I’ve followed this advice ever since. It’s a good principle: don’t complain to people on whom you’re relying – unless there’s no way they can wipe your steak on their bum or drop a bogey in your soup.

As with restaurants, so with schools. The difference with schools is that you’re likely to be stuck with them for a lot longer than one meal. So think carefully before putting on your Mr Angry face and marching into the school for a spot of ranting.

Like all institutions, though, schools do occasionally cock things up, and the fact that it’s their child on the receiving end can make parents hotter under the collar than they would be about a bit of overdone steak. So how best to go about complaining to a school?

Think. Think again

Well, first of all, don’t complain. Yes, that’s right, don’t complain. Complaints are destructive things. They’re the sign of minds missing their meeting, and they’ll do nothing for your relationship with your child’s teacher.

If that doesn’t help, just don’t lose sight of your objective. You’re not complaining to get someone into grief, satisfying though that may seem at times. You’re trying to get something to change. That requires a little more reason and a little less shouting. After all, how would you want a teacher to approach your child’s mistakes: “Try doing it this way next time”, or “You got it wrong, you incompetent git”?

If you don’t want a positive relationship with your child’s school, then feel free to go and tell the headteacher exactly what you think of the colour of his new academy chain-sponsored Ferrari, and the fact that he only seems to be employing sixth-formers as teachers. But don’t expect Johnny to win any more “Star of the Week” certificates. You have to be more subtle. Let’s look at some ways and means of making your point effectively to a school.

Do you really have a point?

Try to remember that your child is not the only student in the school. Complaining that she didn’t get the lead in the nativity play, or that he’s not captain of the football team, is pointless because you don’t know how other children are doing. The school has to manage all the children, including the ones who aren’t yours. Shocking, I know, but what can you do? It’s just possible that your offspring might not be the very best footballer or scholar.

The most common complaint of this kind tends to arrive with “setting”. There can’t be many teachers who haven’t at some time had to point out that, yes, Tom is a bright boy, and yes, he’s been making good progress, but no, he can’t go in the top set because there are 200 students in his year, 30 chairs in a classroom and 100 kids who are performing better than him. As an aside, it always seems to be the parents who are most committed to competition, setting, ranking and all the rest of the dog-eat-dog stuff who get most upset when the dog bites their own puppy. Anyway, if you complain about this, you’ll rapidly become the sort of parent who, when your name is mentioned, causes teachers to raise their eyebrows and mutter “Oh, that Mrs Smith”.

Consider proportionality

Let’s say a harassed teacher gives your child a sanction for missing homework. Your child is adamant that no instruction was received. If you think a raw deal has been had, then speak to the teacher, politely. You may get a slightly different version of events than your child’s, or you may get a teacher who apologises for a case of confused record-keeping. Either way, you’ll have created a positive relationship for the future. Do not write a steaming novella to the chair of governors complaining that your son’s civil rights have been denied. In sensible schools, this will be laughed at, and then ignored after a polite acknowledgement. In less sensible schools, many man-hours will be wasted in justification, explanation and recrimination as everyone scrambles to cover their arses. When the dust settles, your child will still be in that teacher’s class, only now he’s going to be getting a lot of individualised PhD-standard homework which you’ll have to help him with every night until your eyeballs bleed. This is not a positive relationship for the future.

Early on in my teaching career, I suffered this fate. I was introducing A-level coursework, and told my class of year-13s that they had to choose a question that had an element of historical doubt, so there was no point in a question like “Is Blair a bit dishonest?” or “Was Thatcher evil?”.

It was a joke. Not my best, but the sort of thing that raises a loyal chuckle on a boring Thursday afternoon. The next day I was hauled into the head’s office to be read a spittle-flecked diatribe about how a particular parent felt Thatcher “saved this country from the Argentinians”, and they did not send their child to my school to be “indoctrinated by trendy lefty teachers”. The head and I had a chuckle, and I went back to my classroom secretly pleased to have been called “trendy” for the first time in my life. This was not an effective complaint.

Ask first, shout later

Schools can be odd institutions, with odd ways of operating, and often employing odd people. The students, being children, are by definition also odd. So odd things might happen. If something happens that seems, well, odd, then try to approach it first by asking someone to explain. That completely unmarked book might be a sign of a teacher who has lost his pen-of-officially-approved-colour since the start of the year. Or it might be a sign that all the assessments are now done online. If you’re dissatisfied with the answer, by all means make your views known, but don’t assume the worst.

Consider the reliability of witnesses

Look, I’m a parent, and love my children dearly, but I have to admit that when it comes to the “it wasn’t my fault” championships, they’re gold medallists. Every parent has watched one of their children punch a sibling, rip the head off a doll, or write “mum is fat and horrible” on the kitchen table, then turn around with a face of angelic innocence and proclaim sincerely “But I didn’t do anything!”. It’s great that parents want to stick up for their children, but if your child comes home from school with a detention, here are the possibilities:

Your child, being 13 years old, decided to chat to his tablemate about Arsenal while the teacher was talking; got caught, and was handed a detention.

Your child was sitting there paying full attention to every single word, ignoring the temptations of less well-behaved children, when the only adult in the room, a trained professional, decided that she would randomly sanction him for her own sadistic pleasure.

It’s a good idea to apply Occam’s razor (the fewer assumptions, the better)before hitting the complaint button.

Still want to complain?

Having accepted all the above, there will be occasions when the school, or a teacher, does get things wrong. So if you’ve contacted the person in question and still think that something unsatisfactory is taking place, here are a few dos and don’ts about how to proceed.

Do complain to the head

She/he will pass that on to the relevant manager to investigate and report back before responding to you. This might take a couple of days, but it will happen. Note that if you write every week with a complaint, she/he will pass that on to the wastepaper-basket file, and you probably won’t get a response. You nutter.

Don’t leave an answerphone message

Only messages from teachers pretending to have flu to avoid bottom-set year 9 are ever picked up by the office. All the recorded complaints get turned into a mix tape with a death-metal backing track, and played at the end-of-year, sixth-form disco.

Do use the language of Ofsted

Don’t say “What extra are you doing for my child?”. Instead, say “Can you tell me exactly how you’re spending my child’s pupil premium money?”. Trust me, the last one works much better – I’ve used it.

Don’t use ad hominem attacks

I’ve heard parents describing their child’s 12-year-old adversary as a cross between Genghis Khan and Damien the Omen. Clue: a teacher is never going to nod and say: “Yes, Michael is, in fact, a little turd, and we’re going to expel him soon”. Stick to the issues, like whether a class move might be possible, or more teacher supervision at potential breaktime flashpoints – we might be able to do something about those.

Do get yourself elected as a governor

If you’re lucky, your school hasn’t yet been swallowed up by a private academy chain, and so its governing body still has ultimate power, and the headteacher is accountable to it. If you think the school is getting something consistently wrong, then join up. If, on the other hand, your child’s school already has the coat-of-arms of a carpet magnate flying proudly from fifteen newly-installed masts, then you’re stuffed. Sorry.

Curriculum and exams

Complain to the government. They did it. Not us.

Snow days

Complain to God. He’s in charge of the weather.

All things considered

State schools are, by nature, inclusive institutions and encompass all opinions and tastes. Thus it’s impossible to please everyone. For every parent who thinks that their 17-year-old should be allowed to wear Julia Roberts’s Pretty Woman costume to sixth form, there’s another who thinks all the children should be made to dress like a member of Harold Macmillan’s cabinet in 1959.

Let me give you an example of how other parents get in the way: parents’ evenings.

Many schools have taken to handing parents five-minute time-slots with teachers. Theoretically, each parent/child combo turns up at the right time, gets a prepared talk from the teacher for those five minutes and no longer, and then departs to their next appointment. Except the orderly timetable usually lasts approximately fifteen minutes. Why? Other parents.

Parents get lost on the school site when trying to find a toilet; their child loses her appointment sheet. All these things happen. But they also want to talk about their child. It’s so unreasonable! Some of them carry on even after the five minutes is up. I used to sit helplessly smiling back, while watching a pile-up of agitated other parents behind them.

Now I employ a variety of tactics, ranging from closing my markbook with the Thump Of Finality, to sticking my hand out and saying, “thanks for coming in”. It seems to work. But I’ve heard of parents complaining bitterly about being kept waiting by others who had lengthy arguments with their child in front of us (always a good one), or have even broken down in tears (the parent, not the child).

Nearly all the issues you might feel are worthy of complaint stem from this inescapable fact: there are a lot more children in school, and the school has to try and do something for all of them.

Life would be great if the entire institution could be tailored just to your child, with a carefully personalised curriculum and school dinners that provide only your child’s favourite pizza toppings. Such institutions exist: they’re called “home-schools”, and you’re the headteacher. Best of luck.